Coping with abstraction in object orientation with a special focus on interface classes

Lavy, Ilana; Rashkovits, Rami; Kouris, Roy

doi:10.1080/08993400903255218

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The students had difficulties in exhibiting high levels of assimilation concerning a proper design for a hierarchy of exceptions. These results are in line with previous research regarding the object-oriented design capabilities of novice programmers (Lavy et al, 2009;Or-Bach & Lavy, 2004;Sim & Wright, 2001). …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

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Students’ Strategies for Exception Handling

Rashkovits

Lavy

2011

JITE:Research

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Executive SummaryThis study discusses and presents various strategies employed by novice programmers concerning exception handling. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: we provide an analysis tool to measure the level of assimilation of exception handling mechanism; we present and analyse strategies to handle exceptions; we present and analyse solutions provided by novice programmers; we classify and analyse the participants' reflections concerning their solutions. Modern programming languages, such as Java, provide the programmer an elaborated object oriented exception mechanism; enable him to handle exceptions in a more convenient way. The aim of this study was to discover the strategies novice programmers are using to handle exceptions and whether they utilise the advantage of the modern exception handling mechanism. For that matter the participants (college students) had to provide a written solution to a given problem with a special focus on exception handling. In addition each of them was interviewed. The analysis of the solutions provided was carried out according to a set of software quality criteria (clarity, modularity and extensibility) adapted to exception handling characteristics. These criteria were used to explain the advantages and disadvantages of the solutions from a software engineering perspective. The solutions provided were also analysed according to a classification of levels of assimilation concerning the structure of exceptions, based on the SOLO taxonomy. The first level of assimilation refers to solutions in which no exception mechanism was used, and the errors were handled in the old fashion way (local handling or return of an error code). The fifth and last level refers to solutions that used adequate hierarchy of exception classes allowing easy extension according to future requirements and enabling the handling of multiple exception altogether or handle each separately. In between these levels there are strategies that used exception mechanisms without the exhausting of its advantages. The results obtained reveal that only few participants (7 out of 56) provided a solution that was classified to one of the two highest assimilation levels, while many (23 out of 56) did not use exception mechanism at all. The rest of the students (25 out of 56) used the exception mechanism poorly (i.e., used only Exception class or did not use hierarchy of exceptions). The participants had difficulties in utilising the advanced exception handling mechanisms and in exhibiting a high level of abstraction with regard to the proper design of a hierarchy of exceptions. The students' statements collected during the interviews were classified into the following categories: misconceptions concerning code quality; misconceptions concerning exception handling; difficulties in understanding the exception handling mechanism; the perceived importance of exception handling; and a lack of programming experience. During the interviews the students provided explanations concerning the reasons they wer...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…In addition, to be able to construct an adequate class hierarchy, the student must demonstrate a high level of abstraction. Previous research has shown that few students are able to do this (Lavy, Rashkovits, & Kouris, 2009;Or-Bach & Lavy, 2004). …”

Section: Machineoperationexception)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Students’ Strategies for Exception Handling

Rashkovits

Lavy

2011

JITE:Research

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“…The students had difficulty exhibiting high levels of understanding concerning the following: use of multiple exceptions; flow of control in the context of exceptions; handling exceptions further up the calling chain; catching and handling hierarchically related exceptions; and overriding methods that throw exceptions. These results are consistent with previous research regarding the object-oriented design capabilities of novice programmers (Lavy, Rashkovits, & Kouris, 2009;Or-Bach & Lavy, 2004;Sim & Wright, 2001). …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Students’ Understanding of Advanced Properties of Java Exceptions

Rashkovits

Lavy

2012

JITE:IIP

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Executive SummaryThis study examines how Information Systems Engineering School students on the verge of their graduation understand the mechanism of exception handling. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: we construct a questionnaire aimed at examining students' level of understanding concerning exceptions; we classify and analyse the students' responses to the questionnaire in order to determine their level of understanding of the mechanism; and we discuss the students' reflections concerning exceptions. The students were required to demonstrate their understanding of various aspects of Java exception handling: exception throwing and catching, fluency of code in the presence of exceptions, multiple catch clauses, common and different reactions to the various exceptions, passing an exception up the calling chain, proper use of the exception hierarchy, re-throwing an exception, and overriding a method which throws exceptions. The results obtained reveal that almost all the participants understood the basics of throwing and catching an exception, but only a few demonstrated the highest level of understanding of the exception mechanism. As the level of understanding required to address the questionnaire problems increased, the number of study participants who were able to answer correctly decreased substantially. In fact, most of the study participants were not familiar with all the possibilities encompassed by the exception mechanism and so were not able to use them properly. The students' reflections were classified into the following categories: perceptions concerning the benefits of using exceptions; perceptions concerning the complexity of the exception mechanism; and issues concerning the development environment. According to the results obtained we recommend several modifications to the curriculum with the aim of improving the students' ability to properly utilize the advanced properties of exceptions to produce higher quality software.

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“…For example, Seppa¨la¨, Malmi, and Korhonen (2006) emphasize that data structures and algorithms is challenging to learn for most students and many of them have various types of misconceptions. The reader may find similar statements regarding the complexity and difficulty of domains such as object oriented programming (Lavy, Rashkovits, & Kouris, 2009), debugging (Fitzgerald et al, 2008), and algorithm efficiency and complexity (Gal-Ezer, Tamar Vilner, & Ela Zur, 2004). We believe that instructors should be cautious on the impact that rich learning tasks (here implementing peer reviewing) may have on student learning in such complex domains.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 93%

Peer review-based scripted collaboration to support domain-specific and domain-general knowledge acquisition in computer science

Demetriadis

Egerter

Hanisch

et al. 2011

Computer Science Education

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This study investigates the effectiveness of using peer review in the context of scripted collaboration to foster both domain-specific and domain-general knowledge acquisition in the computer science domain. Using a one-factor design with a script and a control condition, students worked in small groups on a series of computer science problems requiring both domain-specific and domain-general knowledge. The scripted groups carried out peer reviews of their draft solutions. Scripted group members spent more time developing their solutions and reported a higher subjective learning outcome than control group members. Scripted groups acquired also significant domain-general knowledge on peer reviewing; however, there were no substantial differences with respect to the acquisition of domain-specific knowledge (as compared to control groups). Overall, the study provides evidence that students in computer science can benefit from peer review-based scripted collaboration and acquire domain-general knowledge without any harm for domain-specific knowledge. The issue of why domain-specific knowledge was not also improved is discussed from various viewpoints.

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Coping with abstraction in object orientation with a special focus on interface classes

Cited by 14 publications

References 20 publications

Students’ Strategies for Exception Handling

Students’ Strategies for Exception Handling

Students’ Understanding of Advanced Properties of Java Exceptions

Peer review-based scripted collaboration to support domain-specific and domain-general knowledge acquisition in computer science

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