Students Motivation to Learn Programming: A Systematic Review
Umer Farooq, Saira Anwar · 2024
Contribution: This research full paper, using a systematic review, explores factors that motivate students to learn programming. This synthesized literature explains students' motivation, which will help refine educational approaches. Background: In today's technological innovation landscape, learning to program is a fundamental skill and no longer bounded by discipline or majors at college. Students need to have foundational knowledge in at least one programming language. To thrive in this digital era, it is crucial for educational institutions to not only teach computer literacy but also inspire a genuine passion for programming among students. However, what effectively motivates students for such endeavors is a challenge, especially in conceptually hard concepts of programming courses. To address the challenge, it is important to synthesize what has already been done and how instructors have nurtured their students' interests. Research Question: The research question that guides the study is: What factors motivate students to learn programming? Methodology: To uncover these factors, we collected data from two databases, ACM Digital Library and Education Source, and found one hundred and thirty-four (134) studies. We filtered one hundred and eight (108) studies using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. This systematic review presents the analysis conducted using twenty-six (26) studies. We used qualitative content analysis to identify the factors influencing students' motivation. Findings: We categorized the studies into three themes: intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and social cognition. This full paper provides an understanding of each theme and the results of the studies to explain the factors of students' motivation when learning programming. We believe that this synthesized literature will help educators refine their educational approaches to nurture and keep students motivated in programming courses.