Factors affecting the success of non-majors in learning to program

The introductory programming course is difficult for many university students, especially students who have little prior exposure to programming. Many factors affecting student success have been identified, but there is still a dearth of knowledge about how key factors combine to affect course outcomes. In this study we develop and empirically test a model integrating three factors of importance in learning to program: previous programming experience, perceived self-efficacy, and knowledge organization. The participants were non-majors. The findings showed that perceived self-efficacy increased significantly during a semester course. Previous experience affected perceived self-efficacy but not knowledge organization. Both perceived self-efficacy and knowledge organization had an effect on the course grade, as well as on success in a specific programming task, debugging. The results on self-efficacy also suggested that the participants were overconfident about their programming capabilities. The contribution of this paper is the identification of the joint effects of an important set of factors for programming success by non-majors

Gender HCI Issues in End-User Software Engineering Environments

Although gender differences in a technological world are receiving significant research attention, much of the research and practice has aimed at how society and education can impact the successes and retention of female computer science professionals. The possibility of gender issues within software, however, has received almost no attention. We hypothesize that factors within software have a strong impact on how well female problem solvers can make use of the software. Evidence from other fields and investigations of our own have revealed evidence supporting this hypothesis

Learning Web Development: Challenges at an Earlier Stage of Computing Education

Web development can serve as a rich and motivating context for introducing computation to new audiences. However, little is known of the difficulties that non-technical students face when learning web development. We report a study of forty-nine library and information science students taking an introductory web development course. By applying content analysis to their online help forums, we found that over ninety percent of help-seeking instances related to development, instruction, and technology. We applied a second level of content analysis to the development challenges, discovering that basic topics like images and links presented significant barriers to further learning. We present these findings and discuss their implications for computing education curricula

Online Trust and Health Information Websites

This study develops and tests a model of online trust of a health care website. The model showed a statistically strong fit to the data (N=176). Trust was significantly explained by perceptions of credibility, ease of use, and risk. Perceived ease of use was a direct predictor of trust and an indirect predictor through credibility. Credibility was both a direct predictor of trust and an indirect predictor through risk

Global user-interface design: Characteristics of multinational corporate websites

The primary goal of a user interface is to support users who play multiple roles in accordance with their contextual environment and purposes of use (Shen, Woolley, & Prior, 2005). Culture is an essential aspect that influences users’ view on contextual environment. Members of a cultural group share distinct cognitions and identity that characterize different cultural dimensions. Therefore, the fundamental basis of web-user interface design may vary across cultures and nationalities. In fact, recent empirical researches have found that website interfaces of different countries often reflect cultural dimensions (Marcus & Gould, 2000; Sheridan, 2001; Robbins & Stylianou, 2002; Wurtz, 2005; Callahan, 2005). In my study, I first discuss various cross-cultural design aspects, including cultural dimensions and web-user interface design principles, followed by the discussion of internationalized and localized websites. I then conducted a qualitative analysis on two sets of an American and a Korean website in order to compare the cultural attributes and characteristics reflected in them. Results indicate that American websites express individualistic and low context cultural characteristics and Korean sites show collectivistic and high context cultural characteristics. However, Korean websites contain some western cultural traits, such as individualism and low context culture. In addition, Korean websites are more visually-oriented than the American one. Other interesting cultural implications were also detected through the qualitative analyses of the interfaces

Global user-interface design: Characteristics of multinational corporate websites

The primary goal of a user interface is to support users who play multiple roles in accordance with their contextual environment and purposes of use (Shen, Woolley, & Prior, 2005). Culture is an essential aspect that influences users’ view on contextual environment. Members of a cultural group share distinct cognitions and identity that characterize different cultural dimensions. Therefore, the fundamental basis of web-user interface design may vary across cultures and nationalities. In fact, recent empirical researches have found that website interfaces of different countries often reflect cultural dimensions (Marcus & Gould, 2000; Sheridan, 2001; Robbins & Stylianou, 2002; Wurtz, 2005; Callahan, 2005). In my study, I first discuss various cross-cultural design aspects, including cultural dimensions and web-user interface design principles, followed by the discussion of internationalized and localized websites. I then conducted a qualitative analysis on two sets of an American and a Korean website in order to compare the cultural attributes and characteristics reflected in them. Results indicate that American websites express individualistic and low context cultural characteristics and Korean sites show collectivistic and high context cultural characteristics. However, Korean websites contain some western cultural traits, such as individualism and low context culture. In addition, Korean websites are more visually-oriented than the American one. Other interesting cultural implications were also detected through the qualitative analyses of the interfaces