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Simple survey on attitude of computer science diploma students towards STEM

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General Information Cached
Title
Simple survey on attitude of computer science diploma students towards STEM
Type
Article
Main Author
Azniah Ismail
Additional Authors
  • Nor Zuhaidah Mohamed Zain
  • Harnani Mat Zin
Subject
LA History of education
Language Code
eng
Bibliographic Details
Place of Production
Tanjong Malim
Publisher
Fakulti Seni, Komputeran dan Industri Kreatif
Year of publication
2019
Degree Type
Others
Corporate Name
Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris

Abstract

This article reported a simple survey on diploma students’ attitudes towards  science,  technology,  engineering,  and  mathematics  (STEM) objectively  to  get  an  initial  impression  of  students  taking  a  STEM-related diploma program. The targeted respondents were diploma students pursuing computer science programs in a Malaysian public university. A quantitative approach  using  a  quantitative  survey  was  used  in  which  data  were systematically  elicited  from  16  male  and  17  female  students  using  a questionnaire  containing  Likert-scale  items.  The  questionnaire  consists  of three  constructs:  attitude  toward  science,  attitude  toward  technology  and engineering,  and  attitude  toward  mathematics.  All  constructs  use  a  5-point Likert  scale  for  the  response  scale.  Descriptive  analysis  showed  that  the respondents’ attitude ranged between moderately to highly positive towards STEM  with  no  significance  different  variation  between  genders  across  the STEM fields. Interestingly, they also had, generally, moderate consideration for careers in STEM fields (the average values ranged between 27.2% and 42.4%) with male respondents had very low agreements (18.7%) to consider careers related to technology and engineering fields. Such results were a bit discouraging  as  the  respondents  were  all  pursuing  a  diploma  in  computer science.Thus,  more  efforts  are  needed  by  the  university  to  give  more exposures and experiences to refine the students’ attitude during their study, to boost their confidence and interest to pursue a career suitable with their diploma certificates  

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