Students’ Understanding of Advanced Properties of Java Exceptions
ARTICLE
Rami Rashkovits, Ilana Lavy, The Academic College of Emek Yezreel, Israel
JITE-IIP Volume 11, Number 1, ISSN 2165-3151 e-ISSN 2165-3151 Publisher: Informing Science Institute
Abstract
This 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.
Citation
Rashkovits, R. & Lavy, I. (2012). Students’ Understanding of Advanced Properties of Java Exceptions. Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovations in Practice, 11(1), 327-352. Informing Science Institute. Retrieved August 12, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/111739/.
Keywords
References
View References & Citations Map- Cabral, B., & Marques, P. (2006). Making exception handling work. Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Hot Topics in System Dependability, 9. Seattle, WA.
- Cabral, B., & Marques, P. (2007). Exception handling: A field study in Java and.NET. ECOOP 2007, LNCS 4609 – Object-oriented programming. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
- Clancy, M. (2004). Misconceptions and attitudes that interfere with learning to program. In S. Fincher & M. Petre (Eds.), Computer science education research (pp. 85–100). Lisse, The Netherlands: Taylor&
- Goetz, J.P. & LeCompte, M.D. (1984). Ethnography and qualitative design in educational research. New York: Academic Press.
- Harden, R.M., & Stamper, N. (1999). What is a spiral curriculum? Medical Teacher, 21, 2.
- Lavy, I., Rashkovits, R., & Kouris, R. (2009). Coping with abstraction in object orientation with special focus on interface class. The Journal of Computer Science Education, 19(3), 155–177.
- Lewis, J., Loftus, W., Struble, C., & Cocking, C. (2003). Java software solutions, AP version. Boston, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley Longman. Rashkovits& Lavy
- Madden, M., & Chambers, D. (2002). Evaluation of student attitudes to learning the Java language. Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on the Principles and Practice of Programming (pp. 125–130).
- Or-Bach, R., & Lavy, I. (2004). Cognitive activities of abstraction in object-orientation: An empirical study. The SIGCSE Bulletin, 36(2), 82–85.
- Rashkovits, R., & Lavy, I. (2011). Students’ strategies for exception handling. The Journal of Information Technology Education (JITE), 10, 183–207. Retrieved from http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol10/JITEv10p183-207Rashkovits939.pdf Robillard, M.P., & Murphy, G.C. (1999). Analyzing exception flow in Java programs. Proceedings of the 7th European Software Engineering Conference held jointly with the 7th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1687, 322– 337. New York: Springer-Verlag.
- Robillard, M.P., & Murphy, G.C. (2000). Designing robust JAVA programs with exceptions. Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, 25(6), 2–10. New York: ACM Press.
- Robillard, M.P., & Murphy, G.C. (2003). Static analysis to support the evolution of exception structure in object-oriented systems. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 12(2), 191– 221. New York: ACM Press.
- Shah, H., Görg, C., & Harrold, M.J. (2010). Understanding exception handling: Viewpoints of novices and experts. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 99, 150–161.
- Sim, E.R., & Wright G. (2001). The difficulties of learning object-oriented analysis and design: An exploratory study. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 42(4), 95–100.
- Topi, H., Valacich, J.S., Kaiser, K., Nunamaker, J.F., Sipior, J.C., de Vreede, G.J., & Wright, R.T. (2010). Curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in information systems. ACM/AIS task force. Retrieved 12 May 2012 from http://blogsandwikis.bentley.edu/iscurriculum/index.php/IS_2010_for_public_review
These references have been extracted automatically and may have some errors. Signed in users can suggest corrections to these mistakes.
Suggest Corrections to References