research-article

The effect of previous programming experience on the learning of scenario-based programming

Authors:

Giora Alexandron,

David HarelAuthors Info & Claims

Koli Calling '12: Proceedings of the 12th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

Pages 151 - 159

https://doi.org/10.1145/2401796.2401821

Published: 15 November 2012 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper we present qualitative findings on the influence of previous programming experience on the learning of the visual, scenario-based programming language of live sequence charts (LSC). Our findings suggest that previous programming experience leads programmers not only to misunderstand or misinterpret concepts that are new to them, but that it can also lead them to actively distort the new concepts in a way that enables them to use familiar programming patterns, rather than exploiting the new ones to good effect. Eventually, this leads to poor usage of some of the new concepts, and also to the creation of programs that behaved differently from what the programmers expected. We also show that previous programming experience can affect programmers' attitude towards new programming concepts. Attitude is known to have an effect on performance. Since LSC and its underlying concepts are of growing popularity in the software engineering community, it is interesting to investigate its learning process. Furthermore, we believe that our findings can shed light on some of the ways by which previous programming experience influences the learning of new programming concepts and paradigms.

References

[1]

B. Adelson and E. Soloway. The Role of Domain Experience in Software Design. IEEE Trans. Software Eng., pages 1351--1360, 1985.

Digital Library

[2]

R. C. Anderson. The Notion of Schemata and the Educational Enterprise: General Discussion of the Conference. In Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1984.

[3]

M. Armoni, J. Gal-Ezer, and O. Hazzan. Reductive thinking in computer science. Computer Science Education, 16(4):281--301, 2006.

[4]

M. Ben-Ari. Constructivism in Computer Science Education. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 20(1):45--73, 2001.

Digital Library

[5]

J.-M. Burkhardt, F. Détienne, and S. Wiedenbeck. The Effect of Object-Oriented Programming Expertise in Several Dimensions of Comprehension Strategies. CoRR, abs/cs/0702002, 2007.

[6]

W. Damm and D. Harel. LSCs: Breathing Life into Message Sequence Charts. Form. Methods Syst. Des., 19(1):45--80, 2001.

Digital Library

[7]

F. Détienne. Design Strategies and Knowledge in Object-Oriented Programming: Effects of Experience. Human-Computer Interaction, 10(2-3):129--170, 1995.

Digital Library

[8]

R. M. Felder and L. K. Silverman. LEARNING AND TEACHING STYLES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION. Engr. Education, 78(7):674--681, 1988.

[9]

J. Gal-Ezer and D. Harel. What (else) should CS educators know? Commun. ACM, 41:77--84, September 1998.

Digital Library

[10]

B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, volume 3. Aldine, 1967.

[11]

B. Haberman. High-School Students' Attitudes Regarding Procedural Abstraction. Education and Information Technologies, 9:131--145, 2004.

Digital Library

[12]

D. Harel. From Play-In Scenarios to Code: An Achievable Dream. In T. Maibaum, editor, Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, volume 1783 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 22--34. Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, 2000.

Digital Library

[13]

D. Harel and M. Gordon-Kiwkowitz. On Teaching Visual Formalisms. IEEE Softw., 26:87--95, May 2009.

Digital Library

[14]

D. Harel and R. Marelly. Come, Let's Play: Scenario-Based Programming Using LSC's and the Play-Engine. Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, USA, 2003.

Digital Library

[15]

D. Harel and R. Marelly. Specifying and executing behavioral requirements: the play-in/play-out approach. Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), 2(2):82--107, 2003.

[16]

O. Hazzan. Reducing Abstraction Level When Learning Abstract Algebra Concepts. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 40:71--90, 1999.

[17]

M. Petre. Why looking isn't always seeing: readership skills and graphical programming. Commun. ACM, 38(6):33--44, June 1995.

Digital Library

[18]

R. S. Rist. Schema Creation in Programming. Cognitive Science, 13(3):389--414, 1989.

[19]

R. S. Rist. Learning to Program: Schema Creation, Application, and Evaluation. In Computer Science Education Research. Routledge Falmer, 2004.

[20]

A. H. Schoenfeld. Mathematical problem solving. Academic Press., Orlando, FL, USA, 1985.

[21]

H. Sharp and J. Griffyth. The Effect of Previous Software Development Experience on Understanding the Object-Oriented Paradigm. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 18(3):245--265, 1999.

Digital Library

[22]

J. Smith III, A. A. diSessa, and J. Roschelle. Misconceptions Reconceived: A Constructivist Analysis of Knowledge in Transition. The journal of the learning sciences, 3(2):115--163, 1994.

[23]

L. P. Steffe and J. Gale, editors. Constructivism in Education. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, USA, 1995.

[24]

M. Vujošević-Janičić and D. Tošić. THE ROLE OF PROGRAMMING PARADIGMS IN THE FIRST PROGRAMMING COURSES. The Teaching of Mathematics, XI(2):63--83, 2008.

[25]

R. L. Wexelblat. The consequences of one's first programming language. Softw., Pract. Exper., 11(7):733--740, 1981.

Cited By

Mladenović MŽanko ŽZaharija G(2024)From Blocks to Text: Bridging Programming MisconceptionsJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/0735633124124004762:5(1302-1326)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331241240047
Das TNath NAcharyya KChakraborty SChatterjee P(2023)Hardware and Software Cyber Security ToolsAI Tools for Protecting and Preventing Sophisticated Cyber Attacks10.4018/978-1-6684-7110-4.ch005(109-131)Online publication date: 26-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-7110-4.ch005
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
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The effect of previous programming experience on the learning of scenario-based programming
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
2. Software and its engineering

Recommendations

Scenario-based programming: reducing the cognitive load, fostering abstract thinking
ICSE Companion 2014: Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

We examine how students work in scenario-based and object- oriented programming (OOP) languages, and qualitatively analyze the use of abstraction through the prism of the dif- ferences between the paradigms. The findings indicate that when working in a ...
Scenario-Based Programming, Usability-Oriented Perception

In this article, we discuss the possible connection between the programming language and the paradigm behind it, and programmers’ tendency to adopt an external or internal perspective of the system they develop. Based on a qualitative analysis, we found ...
Comparing novice programing environments for use in secondary education: App Inventor for Android vs. Alice

Coding is part of logical thinking and is one of the basic skills which are known as '21st-century skills'. Coding acquisition is necessary as it is used in a wide range of occupations. However, computer programing is difficult to learn and programing ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

Koli Calling '12: Proceedings of the 12th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 2012

187 pages

ISBN:9781450317955

DOI:10.1145/2401796

Conference Chairs:
Mikko-Jussi Laakso
University of Turku
,
Robert McCartney
University of Connecticut

Copyright © 2012 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]

Sponsors

Univ. Eastern Finland: University of Eastern Finland
Tampere University of Technology
Univ. Turku: University of Turku
Aalto University

In-Cooperation

SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 November 2012

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

Koli Calling '12

Sponsor:

Univ. Eastern Finland
Univ. Turku

Koli Calling '12: 12th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 15 - 18, 2012

Koli, Finland

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 80 of 182 submissions, 44%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

10
Total Citations
View Citations
199
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)14
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Mladenović MŽanko ŽZaharija G(2024)From Blocks to Text: Bridging Programming MisconceptionsJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/0735633124124004762:5(1302-1326)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331241240047
Das TNath NAcharyya KChakraborty SChatterjee P(2023)Hardware and Software Cyber Security ToolsAI Tools for Protecting and Preventing Sophisticated Cyber Attacks10.4018/978-1-6684-7110-4.ch005(109-131)Online publication date: 26-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-7110-4.ch005
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
Armoni MGal-Ezer J(2023)Computer Science Education Research in IsraelPast, Present and Future of Computing Education Research10.1007/978-3-031-25336-2_18(395-420)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25336-2_18
Hinckle MRachmatullah AMott BBoyer KLester JWiebe EGiannakos MSindre GLuxton-Reilly ADivitini M(2020)The Relationship of Gender, Experiential, and Psychological Factors to Achievement in Computer ScienceProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387403(225-231)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341525.3387403
Veerasamy AD’Souza DLindén RLaakso M(2017)The Impact of Prior Programming Knowledge on Lecture Attendance and Final ExamJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/073563311770769556:2(226-253)Online publication date: 8-May-2017
https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633117707695
Armoni M(2017)COMPUTING IN SCHOOLSOn teaching problem-solving paradigms in K-12 educationACM Inroads10.1145/31485338:4(30-32)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3148533
Alexandron GArmoni MGordon MHarel D(2017)Teaching Scenario-Based Programming: An Additional Paradigm for the High School Computer Science Curriculum, Part 2Computing in Science & Engineering10.1109/MCSE.2017.397116219:6(64-71)Online publication date: Nov-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2017.3971162
Cuenca FVan den Bergh JLuyten KConinx K(2016)HasseltInternational Journal of People-Oriented Programming10.4018/IJPOP.20160101025:1(19-38)Online publication date: Jan-2016
https://doi.org/10.4018/IJPOP.2016010102
Alexandron GArmoni MGordon MHarel D(2014)Scenario-Based Programming, Usability-Oriented PerceptionACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE)10.1145/264881414:3(1-23)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2648814

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten