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Object-Oriented Design and Programming: An Investigation of Novices’ Conceptions on Objects and Classes

Author:

Stelios XinogalosAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), Volume 15, Issue 3

Article No.: 13, Pages 1 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/2700519

Published: 28 July 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) technique is nowadays the most popular programming technique among tertiary education institutions. However, learning OOP is a cognitively demanding task for undergraduate students. Several difficulties and misconceptions have been recorded in the literature for both OOP concepts and languages, mainly Java. This article focuses on reviewing and advancing research on the most fundamental OOP concepts, namely, the concepts of “object” and “class” and their role during program execution. The results of a long-term investigation on the subject are presented, focusing on a study exploring undergraduate students’ conceptions on “objects” and “classes.” The study advances related research on categories of conceptions on “objects” and “classes” by providing quantitative results, in addition to qualitative results, regarding the frequency of the recorded conceptions. Nearly half the students seem to comprehend the modeling and static/dynamic aspects of the concepts “object” and “class.” Implications for achieving a deep conceptual understanding of text, action, and modeling aspects of these fundamental concepts are also discussed. Information regarding the programming environments utilized in the course and key features of the applied teaching approach are presented, in order to facilitate both a better understanding of the context and a better employment of the results of the presented study. Finally, proposals for enhancing the contribution of this and similar studies are made.

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Cited By

Tsichouridis AXinogalos SAmpatzoglou A(2023)Educational Programming Environments for Enhancing Conceptual Design in the Object-Oriented Paradigm: A Systematic Mapping StudyJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/0735633123120325162:1(290-322)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331231203251
Flores PRivas ITorres J(2023)Difficulties in Object-Oriented Design and its relationship with Abstraction: A Systematic Review of LiteratureProceedings of the 4th European Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3651640.3651643(1-13)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3651640.3651643
Esche SWeihe KLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Choosing a Didactic Basis for an Instructional Video: What Are the Implications For Novice Programmers?Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588795(450-456)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588795
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Index Terms

Object-Oriented Design and Programming: An Investigation of Novices’ Conceptions on Objects and Classes
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Classes and objects
      2. Language types
        Object oriented languages

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computing Education

ACM Transactions on Computing Education Volume 15, Issue 3

September 2015

69 pages

EISSN:1946-6226

DOI:10.1145/2809889

Editors:
Robert McCartney
University of Connecticut, USA
,
Josh Tenenberg
University of Washington Tacoma, USA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 28 July 2015

Accepted: 01 November 2014

Revised: 01 October 2014

Received: 01 June 2013

Published in TOCE Volume 15, Issue 3

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Cited By

Tsichouridis AXinogalos SAmpatzoglou A(2023)Educational Programming Environments for Enhancing Conceptual Design in the Object-Oriented Paradigm: A Systematic Mapping StudyJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/0735633123120325162:1(290-322)Online publication date: 21-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331231203251
Flores PRivas ITorres J(2023)Difficulties in Object-Oriented Design and its relationship with Abstraction: A Systematic Review of LiteratureProceedings of the 4th European Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3651640.3651643(1-13)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3651640.3651643
Esche SWeihe KLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Choosing a Didactic Basis for an Instructional Video: What Are the Implications For Novice Programmers?Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588795(450-456)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588795
Amoudi GTbaishat D(2023)Interactive notebooks for achieving learning outcomes in a graduate course: a pedagogical approachEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-023-11854-x28:12(16669-16704)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-023-11854-x
Xinogalos S(2023)Designing, Deploying and Evaluating an Undergraduate Course on the “Didactics of Informatics”Technology and Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Education10.1007/978-3-031-22918-3_7(83-99)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22918-3_7
Allen ODowns XVaroy ELuxton-Reilly AGiacaman N(2022)Block-Based Object-Oriented ProgrammingIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2022.319031815:4(439-453)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2022.3190318
Lian VVaroy EGiacaman N(2022)Learning Object-Oriented Programming Concepts Through Visual AnalogiesIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2022.315480515:1(78-92)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2022.3154805
Flores PAlvarez MTorres J(2022)Identifying Difficulties of Software Modeling Through Class Diagrams: A Long-Term Comparative AnalysisIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.315729010(28895-28910)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3157290
Gutiérrez LGuerrero CLópez-Ospina H(2022)Ranking of problems and solutions in the teaching and learning of object-oriented programmingEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-022-10929-527:5(7205-7239)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-022-10929-5
Batur FBrinda T(2022)Students’ Conceptions of Programming in the Context of Game DesignDigital Transformation of Education and Learning - Past, Present and Future10.1007/978-3-030-97986-7_7(79-90)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2022
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