review-article

An evaluation of object oriented example programs in introductory programming textbooks

Authors:

Jürgen Börstler,

Marie Nordström,

James H. Paterson,

Carsten Schulte, and

Lynda ThomasAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 41, Issue 4

Pages 126 - 143

https://doi.org/10.1145/1709424.1709458

Published: 18 January 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Research shows that examples play an important role for cognitive skill acquisition. Students as well as teachers rank examples as important resources for learning to program. Therefore examples must be consistent with the principles and rules of the topics we are teaching.

However, educators often struggle to find or develop objectoriented example programs of high quality. Common examples are often perceived as not fully faithful to all principles and guidelines of the object-oriented paradigm, or as not following general pedagogical principles and practices. Unless students are able to engage with good examples, they will not be able to tell desirable from undesirable properties in their own and others' programs.

In this paper we report on a study in which experienced educators reviewed a wide range of object-oriented examples for novices from popular textbooks. This review was accomplished using an on-line checklist that elicited responses on 10 quality factors. Results show that the evaluation instrument provides a sufficiently consistent set of responses to distinguish examples.

The paper then goes on to examine some of the characteristics of good and bad examples and how this study will influence the evolution of the evaluating instrument.

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Cited By

Chiodini LMoreno Santos IHauswirth MHenz MLerner B(2022)Expressions in Java: Essential, Prevalent, Neglected?Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on SPLASH-E10.1145/3563767.3568131(41-51)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563767.3568131
Smith J(2020)Presenting Basic CS Concepts: A Content Analysis of AP CSA TextbooksProceedings of the 20th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3428029.3428567(1-2)Online publication date: 19-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3428029.3428567
Venigalla AChimalakonda S(2020) DynamiQue – A Technical Intervention To Augment Static Textbook with Dynamic Q&A Interactive Learning Environments10.1080/10494820.2020.174401630:9(1693-1707)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1744016
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Index Terms

An evaluation of object oriented example programs in introductory programming textbooks
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Object oriented languages

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 41, Issue 4

December 2009

205 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1709424

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Copyright © 2010 Authors.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 January 2010

Published in SIGCSE Volume 41, Issue 4

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