The aim of this study was to explore Taiwanesecollege students’ conceptions of and approaches to learningcomputer science and then explore the relationshipsbetween the two. Two surveys, Conceptions of LearningComputer Science (COLCS) and Approaches to LearningComputer Science (ALCS), were administered to 421college students majoring in computer science-relateddepartments in Taiwan. The COLCS survey included thefollowing seven factors, in a hierarchical order: learningcomputer science as ‘‘Memorizing,’’ ‘‘Testing,’’ ‘‘Calcu-lating and practicing,’’ ‘‘Programming,’’ ‘‘Increasing one’sknowledge,’’ ‘‘Application and understanding,’’ and‘‘Seeing in a new way.’’ Particularly, differing from pre-vious learning conception studies, one newly developedfactor, ‘‘Programming,’’ was added to COLCS to incor-porate this unique feature for computer science students.The ALCS survey consisted of four factors: ‘‘Surfacemotive,’’ ‘‘Surface strategy,’’ ‘‘Deep motive,’’ and ‘‘Deepstrategy.’’ The results showed that these two surveys weredeemed to be sufficiently reliable for assessing students’conceptions of and approaches to learning computer sci-ence. It was also found that the ‘‘Programming’’ factorshould be considered as a higher-level learning conception,similar to the other higher-level conceptions in COLCSsuch as ‘‘Increase one’s knowledge,’’ ‘‘Application andunderstanding,’’ and ‘‘Seeing in a new way.’’ Furthermore,the ‘‘Application’’ and ‘‘Understanding’’ factors weremerged into a single factor, ‘‘Application and understand-ing,’’ in this study. However, it was indicated that bothTaiwanese college students’ lower- and higher-levellearning conceptions were positively correlated to theirsurface motivations to learn computer science.

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• The Assessment of Taiwanese College Students’ Conceptions of and Approaches to Learning Computer Science and Their Relationships