Joelle El Khoury

and 3 more

This article targets first-year engineering studentsâ\euro™ self-efficacy beliefs and their relationship with performance attainments in the first half of the semester and the final grade of the programming course. Self-efficacy is the belief in oneâ\euro™s capabilities to reach a desired goal or outcome by setting and implementing the required courses of action. In education, self-efficacy is crucial to academic growth, for it helps students take charge of their own learning, develop their skills, set goals, and regulate their motivation in order to accomplish these goals. Considering the difficulty of the programming course, self-efficacy plays a vital role in the challenges the students face in the programming course, their magnitude, and the skills the students use to overcome them. Self-efficacy beliefs were measured through a survey administered twice to 118 engineering students in the first half of the semester and correlated with the first quiz of the semester and the midterm grade, then with the final grade. The analyses targeted all engineering students, then each engineering major separately: Computer, Electrical, Mechatronics, Mechanical, and Industrial engineering. The results showed that there is in fact a relationship between studentsâ\euro™ self-efficacy beliefs and performance in the programming course. However, the relationship was shown to be inverse in the first half of the semester but positive with the final grade. These findings highlight the importance of student efficacy beliefs especially in the first half of the semester while also presenting new empirical findings regarding each engineering major targeted.