Does Education Culture Influence Factors in Learning Programming: A Comparative Study between Two Universities across Continents

Learning programming has been considered challenging by
students and remains a daunting task for educators despite their efforts
into finding innovative ways to teach programming. A lot of factors
have been studied since 1970s and educators today are still trying to
unearth the factors that play significant roles in learning programming.
As most of the important research in this regard has been done in
developed countries, it is imperative to understand whether differences
in education culture between developed and developing country can
influence how the factors affect learning of programming. This paper
presents the results of a comparative study on the effects of differences
in education culture between two universities in Australia and India
respectively on the chosen factors in learning introductory
programming. The results show that prior programming experience,
gender, reason to study programming, attendance, and revision had
different effects, while activities performed in the lecture theatre and
preliminary preparation before lecture and lab had the same effect in the
two universities. The findings help gain insight whether certain factors
are culture dependent/independent so that educators can focus on the
specific factors that will help students better learn programming in a
particular education culture context.