Role of foundation courses and gender in Thailand's undergraduate information technology education

Abstract

There has been a rapid increase in the number of undergraduate programs in information technology around the world over the past decade. Course requirements for undergraduate information technology programs offered by different institutions vary greatly. This paper focuses on the importance of foundation science and mathematics courses found in most programs offered by universities in Thailand. A survey of 20 undergraduate information technology programs showed that the number of credits required for foundation science and mathematics courses ranges from six to 30 credits. In order to better understand the relationship between students' performance on these foundation courses and their performance on courses in other areas, grade point averages of 115 students of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology program at one university were collected for each course taken. These courses were then categorized into foundation science, foundation mathematics, information technology, and other courses. Analyses of collected data showed that students who performed well in foundation science/mathematics courses tended to perform well in information technology courses. The students were also grouped by gender, and it was found that female students performed better than male students in foundation mathematics courses, information technology courses, and overall program.