Programming Course Sequence and Prior Knowledgeof Programming Languages:Do They Affect Students\u27 Grades?

Research in the field of education has shown that learning a new skill or subject is enhanced when prior learning on a similar topic has already taken place. Conversely, articles in the popular press have reported that object-oriented programming languages are more difficult to learn if the programmer already knows a non object-oriented language. This study will survey 400 students in Cobol, C++, and Visual Basic to determine if prior programming courses affect students\u27 grades and if so, if there is an optimal sequence to learning the languages. Results can be used by IS educators to plan programming course sequence, by practitioners to design better training programs, and by researchers to further examine cognitive issues when learning programming language

Threshold Concepts in Object-Oriented Modelling

Proponents of the object-oriented (OO) paradigm frequently claim that the OO paradigm is ‘more natural’ than the procedural paradigm because the world is filled with objects that have both attributes and behaviors. However students in higher education generally experience considerable difficulty in understanding OO concepts and acquiring the necessary skills in object-oriented analysis and design. This paper proposes OO modelling to be a set of threshold concepts and describes a study that sought to improve undergraduate students’ learning of OO modelling by adopting concept maps as ‘stepping stones’ to facilitate the development of analysis class and sequence diagrams

DO SEQUENCE AND CONCURRENCY MATTER?: An Investigation of Order and Timing Effects on Student Learning of Programming Languages

IS educators often struggle with curriculum issues including timeliness and completeness of the curriculum. While model curricula suggest that programming courses should be a part of an IS undergraduate degree, little guidance is offered as to the order and timing of these courses. A longitudinal survey of students in programming courses was used to assess whether sequence or concurrency explained any variance in perceptual performance measures. Sequence of programming courses did not hinder student performance, and concurrency actually improved performance for Visual Basic. Insights from the study provide guidance for curricular design issues regarding the sequencing and timing of programming courses

Student success model in programming course: A case study in UUM

The complexity and difficulty ascribed to computer programming has been asserted to be the causes of its high rate of failure record and attrition. It is opined that programming either to novice, middle learner, and the self-branded geeks is always a course to be apprehensive of different studies with varying findings. Studies on factors leading to the success of programming course in higher institution have been carried out. The record at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) shows that 38% of semester one undergraduate students failed the programming course in 2013. This really motivates this study, which aims at investigating the practical factors affecting the success of programming courses, and to position its’ theoretically findings to complement the existing findings. Data were gathered using a quantitative approach, in which a set of questionnaire were distributed to 282 sampled respondents, who are undergraduate and postgraduate students of Information Technology (IT) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Having screened and cleaned the data, which led to the deletion of four outlier records, independent T-test, correlation, and regression were run to test the hypotheses. The results of Pearson correlation test reveal that teaching tools, OOP concepts, motivation, course evaluation, and mathematical aptitude are positively related to academic success in programming course, while fear is found to be negatively related. In addition, the regression analysis explains that all the elicited independent variables except fear are strongly related. Besides, the independent T-test also discovers no deference between groups with and without previous programming experience

Strategies in object-oriented design

This paper presents a study aiming to analyse the design strategies of experts in object-oriented programming. We report an experiment conducted with four experts. Each subject solved three problems. Our results show that three strategies may be used in program design according to the solution structure. An object-centred strategy and a function-centred strategy are used when the solution has a hierarchical structure with vertical communication between objects. In this case, the plan which guides the design activity is declarative. A procedure-centred strategy is used when the solution has a flat structure with horizontal communication between objects. In this case, the plan which guides the design activity is procedural. These results are discussed in relation with results on design strategies in procedural design. Furthermore, our results provide insight into the knowledge structures of experts in object-oriented design. To conclude, we point out limitations of this study and discuss implications of our results for Human-Computer Interaction systems, in particular for systems assisting experts in their design activity

Problemas y soluciones en el aprendizaje del desarrollo de software orientado a objetos

Se analizan los problemas generales que presenta el paradigma orientado a objetos para su aprendizaje y las dificultades particulares que se derivan del contexto actual donde la tecnología todavía está en cocción y el paradigma procedural es hegemónico. A partir de estos antecedentes se exponen las soluciones que se adoptaron en cursos concretos y los resultados alcanzados