Effects of Peer Tutoring, Attitude and Personality on Academic Performance of First Year Introductory Programming Students

Programming is the core of any computer science degree. Failure to grasp programming concepts such as logical reasoning and problem solving skills will have a negative impact on student's academic performance. A preliminary research was carried out at the University of Technology, Jamaica amongst first year computing students to ascertain factors that affect poor performance in introductory programming course. The study sought to examine the effect of peer tutoring, and attitude on academic performance. A control and experimental group was established, and an instrument was administered to measure students' attitude to programming along with the use of pre and post test scores. The study suggested that peer tutoring had a positive effect on students' attitude, namely, personal confidence, and academic performance. Further investigations were carried with a similar methodology and personality was explored as an additional factor affecting academic performance. Both studies revealed that personal confidence in learning programming contributed more significantly than the usefulness of programming and the perception of teacher motivation. The statistical analysis revealed no significant influence of personality types on academic performance, which suggests that it does not play an important role