Analysis of the experience, interests, and expectations of first-year students of the UEV STEAM degrees

Author: Víctor Yeste. Universitat Politècnica de València. Universidad Europea de Valencia.The main objective is to analyze, using descriptive statistics, the experience, interests, and expectations of the programming languages by first-year students of the STEAM degrees of the European University of Valencia.Google Forms was chosen to evaluate students' views on programming languages and computational thinking through a question. It is a free tool that has been used in many studies, such as Haddad and Kalaani (2014), to capture the opinion of students beyond course assessment surveys, as it is straightforward, systematic, and easy to implement. It can be used through a web-based application to create online questionnaires with a friendly interface. All answers are collected using a Google Spreadsheet document stored on Google Drive. In addition, it enables the results of the questionnaire to be visualized through a statistical summary of each question and its answers.The questionnaire consisted of 19 questions, although some were subject to a specific answer to a previous question. To carry out the form, the first day of class of the subject of Fundamentals of Programming or Scientific Computing I has been chosen (depending on the degree, has a different name, even the same), specifically in the classes of 19 and 20 September 2023. It is a subject that is given in the first semester of the first year of all STEAM degrees of the European University of Valencia, which include Data Science, Physics, Engineering in Industrial Organization, and a Double Engineering Degree in Engineering in Industrial Organization and Business Administration and Management. In this subject, computational thinking is developed thanks to the study of theory and a significant practical component of programming in C++, one of today's most influential and essential programming languages (Cyganek, 2022).The questionnaire was proposed to first-year 2023-2024 students, encouraging them to participate in the first class they had on the subject and through a direct link to the questionnaire on the virtual campus, based on Canvas.This dataset has contributed to the elaboration of the book chapter:Yeste, Víctor (2024). ¿Los alumnos de STEAM saben programar al comenzar la universidad? Análisis de su experiencia, intereses y expectativas. In <i>Perspectivas Contemporáneas en Educación: </i><i>Innovación, Investigación y Transformación</i>, Dykinson S.L.