The Benefits of Object Oriented Development: Toward a Framework for Evaluation

This paper describes the initial efforts to explore the benefits of OO development by describing a framework for categorizing benefits based on phases of system development and by level of analysis. The level of analysis of OO benefits can be the enterprise level, the project level, and the individual developer level. The framework was tested by conducting structured interviews with information systems professionals to assess their perceptions of the reasons for selecting OO technology and OO benefits at the three levels of analysis. The initial results indicate that OO is selected for use for a variety of reasons, but primarily because of perceived productivity benefits. The greatest benefit is thought to be at the enterprise level or project level, with fewer benefits for the individual programmer. Of the benefits often mentioned in the literature, OO being a more natural way of thinking for developers did not appear to be supported

Objects-First Vs. Structures-First Approaches To 00 Programming Education: A Replication Study

One of the essential elements of a successful organization is information technology, which has as its basis effective and efficient software development. The foundation of software development is computer programming. The last decade of computer programming education has been dominated by the object-oriented paradigm. While recent anecdotal accounts among computer science and computer information systems educators have often favored the objects-first approach to programming instruction (vis-a-vis the structures-first approach), very little empirical evidence has been offered. A field study by Johnson and Moses (2008) suggested that the objects-first approach is superior, but the experimental design was open to criticism. This replication study significantly improves upon the experimental design yielding results that indicate neither the objects-first or the structures-first approach is preferred. While an inconclusive result may seem unimportant, it does provide needed guidance to educators to make pedagogical decisions based on other perhaps more important factors to help ensure the students\u27 success. On the positive side, the study does suggest that learning object-oriented programming is more difficult for novices than learning procedural programming, which is also important for programming educators

A comparative analysis of the emotional intelligence levels of American and Chinese business students

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a characteristic of business students that has been the subject of significant research. This study was designed to extend that prior research by comparing the EI scores of American business students with those of Chinese business students. The study further focuses on those factors which may be related to ways in which the two groups of individuals differ in their levels of Emotional Intelligence. Specifically, a number of demographic characteristics were evaluated with regard to whether or not they were associated with differences in EI achievement scores between both the American and Chinese business students. Results indicate that students\u27 EI scores did significantly differ for the two groups when the factors of age, gender and grade point average were considered