Considerable research has focused on the relationship between computer experience, computer anxiety and self-efficacy. These factors have been used both individually and in combination as predictors in the social sciences and business studies [1, 7, 17]. However, very few studies investigate their effects in the area of computer science. This study focuses on capturing these factors across the four years of a computer science course at Trinity College, Dublin. It shows that as computer experience increases self-efficacy also increases while computer anxiety decreases with increasing experience.

This paper describes the structure, implementation, and impact evaluation of a Programming Support Centre for engineering and computing students. The main focus of this centre is to provide a positive, supportive atmosphere where students can voluntarily seek one-to-one assistance with programming difficulties. The support offered is specifically structured to nurture and leverage each student's motivation for taking a programming course whilst providing them with individually tailored advice and practical help.A qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the centre's operation is presented, together with analysis of statistics on student motivation. The results of this research suggest that the newly developed programming support centre has had a positive impact on student learning.

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Many Computer Science and Engineering curricula contain core modules on computer programming and programming languages. An increasing number of institutions choose to introduce undergraduates to programming through object oriented languages. As part of a longitudinal phenomenographic study we have set out to investigate the understanding of programming concepts that first year undergraduate students have when learning to program and think in the object oriented paradigm. The conceptions that students have developed on what learning to program really means and their perception of program correctness are explored; providing an insight into the levels of abstraction and complexity of the learners' understanding. Our findings suggest that the way students experience learning to program is related to their perception of what constitutes program correctness.