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Student understanding of object-oriented programming as expressed in concept maps

Published: 12 March 2008 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of an experiment in which we sought to elicit students' understanding of object-oriented (OO) concepts using concept maps. Our analysis confirmed earlier research indicating that students do not have a firm grasp on the distinction between "class" and "instance." Unlike earlier research, we found that our students generally connect classes with both data and behavior. Students rarely included any mention of the hardware/software context of programs, their users, or their real-world domains. Students do mention inheritance, but not encapsulation or abstraction. And the picture they draw of OO is a static one: we found nothing that could be construed as referring to interaction among objects in a program. We then discuss the implications for teaching introductory OO programming.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '08: Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
March 2008
606 pages
ISBN:9781595937995
DOI:10.1145/1352135
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Published: 12 March 2008

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Author Tags

  1. concept maps
  2. cs1
  3. empirical research
  4. object-oriented

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  • (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
  • (2022)Students’ learning process in the computer laboratory2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962716(1-6)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
  • (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: 8-Feb-2022
  • (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
  • (2018)Statistical Frequency-Analysis of Misconceptions In Object-Oriented-ProgrammingProceedings of the 18th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3279720.3279727(1-10)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2018
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  • (2017)On the (Mis) Understanding of the "this" ReferenceProceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3017680.3017715(489-494)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2017
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