Motivation of Engineering Students with a Mixed-Contexts Approach to Introductory Programming

This research to practice full paper investigates motivation of engineering students with a mixed-contexts approach to introductory programming. Non-major CS1 students usually have more difficulties learning computer programming than CS majors, for reasons such as lack of interest in computing or courses formatted for CS majors. Student motivation is vital in the learning process, and fostering it is important to promote more effective learning. Various initiatives have been proposed to increase engagement and reduce the difficulties faced by non-majors in CS1 courses. We believe that motivation can be improved by using a mix of languages and tools already tested in CS1 teaching. In this paper, we evaluate a teaching approach for non-majors, which combines the use of Scratch in a context of game creation, and Python with both turtle graphics and image manipulation. We performed an exploratory case study with CS1 civil engineering students from our institution to analyze the impact of this approach on student motivation. Our results describe motivation arisen during the course in terms of attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction (ARCS), and as practical factors that contribute to either increase or decrease motivation.