Factors determining the low attitude towards programming skills in learning institutions: a case study of Makerere University School of Statistics and Planning

Abstract

Programming skills date remain essential skills that many professionals admire to acquire for their long-term career goals. The learning institutions at a higher level such as the University and some computer institutes have embraced this as an important aspect in their evolving curriculums. However, there are several factors that contribute to a learner’s interest in acquiring these beneficial skills. A programming language in a simple definition means instructions that are provided by a highly technical individual in order to make the computer perform specific tasks such as generating statistics, predictions, and detecting unauthorized accesses. Some of the common examples of programming languages taught by the learning institutions in the country mainly include; C, C++, Python, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, R, and SQL. This study therefore mainly sought to find out the factors determining the low attitude towards programming skills based on a case study of Makerere University at the School of Statistics and Planning (SSP). Analysis was conducted on a sample of 100 students both undergraduate and Post-graduate levels. An ordered logistic regression model was used to find out the effect of demographic and socio-economic factors on the low attitude towards programming skills. Overall, the majority of the students had a indifferent attitude towards the programming skills with most of them males and aged 21 and 22 years. Many of the students responded that active participation during the programming course study was very much and slightly encouraged. The majority of the students considered programming skills extremely important for their employment in the future and most of them had never been subjected to any form of gender biases while engaging in the study program. The low attitude towards programming skills in learning institutions had gender and stereotypes and gender of the respondent as the statistically significant factors that were associated with it. The institution’s administration in conjunction with the government should intervene in the gender and stereotypes to favor the confidence and comfortability of the students during the programming course. The institution should also the male students with more information about the career paths that they would follow if it was taken into serious consideration to boost their attitude towards them. The institution should furthermore encourage projects that favor both genders to participate in and be passionate about programming skills to reduce the chances of gender biases. This will boost their attitudes towards these skills.