Abstract
Notably, many students entering the University of Tripoli fail or drop out of the introductory programming course. Freshmen face various difficulties in introductory computer programming courses. Some common challenges they face include problem-solving, learning syntax, and editing and writing the code. In this study, 224 students in the computer science department at the Faculty of Science were enrolled in an introductory Python programming course. The study aims to identify and understand the challenges freshmen face in an introductory computer programming course. Furthermore, we explored the types of materials students prefer in an introductory computer programming course. We also explored the impact of the preferred material on understanding the programming concepts. The statistical analysis of the data gathered from students identifies and ranks the main difficulties they face. We found that understanding the problem in the programming assignment was the major difficulty students faced. We further explored the relationship between the difficulties the students face, and the materials used to study the programming course. The results also support our hypotheses of correlations between student difficulty and private courses provided outside the university. The results show no relationship between student difficulty learning and private courses provided outside the university. Finally, we concluded with recommendations on improving the material contents and adapting the study material that students prefer in teaching introductory computer programming courses.