Avoiding object misconceptions

ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 2011

Example programs play an important role in the teaching and learning of programming. Students as well as teachers rank examples as the most important resources for learning to program. Example programs work as role models and must therefore always be consistent with the principles and rules we are teaching.

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2008

A significant part of learning to program is to be exposed to examples that may work as templates, guidelines and inspiration for the students' own programs. It is therefore important that textbooks provide high quality examples. In this paper, we discuss properties of example programs that might affect the teaching and learning of object-oriented programming. Furthermore, we present an evaluation instrument for example programs and report on initial experiences of its application to a selection of examples from popular introductory programming textbooks.

ACM Transactions on Computing Education

Efforts to improve computer science education are underway, and teachers of computer science are challenged in introductory programming courses to help learners develop their understanding of programming and computer science. Identifying and addressing students’ misconceptions is a key part of a computer science teacher's competence. However, relevant research on this topic is not as fully developed in the computer science education field as it is in mathematics and science education. In this article, we first review relevant literature on general definitions of misconceptions and studies about students’ misconceptions and other difficulties in introductory programming. Next, we investigate the factors that contribute to the difficulties. Finally, strategies and tools to address difficulties including misconceptions are discussed. Based on the review of literature, we found that students exhibit various misconceptions and other difficulties in syntactic knowledge, conceptual kno...

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 2004

This paper reports on an experiment in which first year programming students were given explicit encouragement to use Object (Instance) diagrams when tracing code in multiple-choice questions. We conjectured that by providing scaffolding in this technique, students would be helped to understand the code better and that they would then continue to draw their own diagrams in similar situations. This turned out not to be the case. Although generally students who draw diagrams do better in questions that test their understanding of code behaviour and object referencing, our intervention does not appear to have helped students and the students who were exposed to the intervention were not more likely to go on to use the technique themselves.

ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 2019

Programming skills are an increasingly desirable asset across disciplines; however, learning to program continues to be difficult for many students. To improve pedagogy, we need to better understand the concepts that students find difficult and which have the biggest impact on their learning. Threshold-concept theory provides a potential lens on student learning, focusing on concepts that are troublesome and transformative. However, there is still a lack of consensus as to what the most relevant threshold concepts in programming are. The challenges involved are related to concept granularity and to evidencing some of the properties expected of threshold concepts. In this article, we report on a qualitative study aiming to address some of these concerns. The study involved focus groups with undergraduate students of different-year groups as well as professional software developers so as to gain insights into how perspectives on concepts change over time. Four concepts emerged from th...