Factors Affecting the Educator’s Ability on Learners’ Attraction in Learning the Programming Subject Specifically to the Engineering Students at UiTM Pulau Pinang

Abstract

Teaching the subject of computer programming, especially to engineering students at higher education institutions, requires a comprehensive teaching approach, flexible pedagogy and hybrid teaching creativity to cultivate learners’ attraction and realise a realistic learning atmosphere. Research demonstrated that students are not attentive to learning the programming subject owing to several factors such as teaching materials and pedagogy, class size and programming difficulties. Hence, this paper concentrates on the factors related to educators contributing to the students’ attraction to learning the programming subject. This study was conducted at Universiti Teknologi MARA, Pulau Pinang Branch with a total of 241 students from the engineering schools responding to the online survey. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. The reliability test or Cronbach’s Alpha values was performed before analysing the questionnaire. The IBM SPSS was used in evaluating the data collected from the questionnaire and through factor analysis, it was found that the educators’ roles affected the students’ attraction and understanding ability in learning the programming subject. The results obtained from factor analysis indicated that the personality traits of programming lecturers and instructional material (additional references) are the major contributors to the attraction of students toward programming subjects. This finding can help educators to improvise and innovate new teaching approaches to make the computer programming class fascinating and enhance the students’ learning.