Impact of Pre-University Factors on the Motivation and Performance of Undergraduate Students in Software Engineering

The significant number of fails and dropouts in computing undergraduate courses, especially in mathematics and programming, remains a challenge. Although the motivation can be directly related to the success of the student, it has only been addressed by a few studies. The purpose in this paper is to assess the impact of factors prior to university on the performance and motivation of undergraduate freshmen students in Software Engineering. Questionnaires were applied to students, and their grades on introduction to programming (CS101) and discrete mathematics (MAT101) were analyzed. Using statistical analysis of variance and correlation, we identified that motivation was impacted only by "knowledge and previous experience in programming". Performance was impacted by "previous scholar knowledge", "way to access university", "age" and "taste/knowledge of the area". We identified as well, unlike other studies, that the initial motivation had no impact on students' performance.