Knowledge, skills and strategies for successful object-oriented programming: a proposed learning repertoire

Abstract

Third year Computer Science students were studied in order to determine which knowledge, skills and strategies they used during an object-oriented programming task. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyse their computer programs and associated thinking processes. Successful programmers applied significantly more cognitive, metacognitive and problem-solving knowledge, skills and strategies, also using a greater variety, than the unsuccessful ones. Based on the approaches of the successful programmers, we propose a learning repertoire of integrated knowledge, skills and strategies, which can serve as a framework to support novices learning object-oriented programming (OOP).