Abstract

The difference between male and female academic performance in any level of education has always been an issue. Learning styles, personality, confidence, socio-economic status, and values were attributed to the academic performance of both genders. Understanding the different attributes from both genders will give the teachers insight into planning and strategizing teaching methodologies to deliver the lessons more effectively. Thus, this study is concerned to answer whether there is a significant difference between the academic performance of males and females in terms of demographic profile, academic background, and academic performance in programming 1 and 2, and object-oriented courses of 109 BS Information Technology students at Laguna State Polytechnic University, San Pablo City of the 2nd semester of AY 2017-2018. The results showed that there is a significant difference in the academic performance of students who graduated from public and private high schools. The same result was revealed in HS GWA and academic performance in the three programming courses. This indicates that students who graduated from private HS with high GWA are likely to perform better in computer programming courses. It is recommended that reinforcement activities may be added during the conduct of classes in programming for students who graduated from public high school to improve their academic performance. Further studies concerning factors that contributed to the poor academic performance of students who came from public high schools may be conducted.

Keywords: gender, academic performance, computer programming, learning style