research-article

Free access

Students' understandings of concurrent programming

Authors:

Anders BerglundAuthors Info & Claims

Koli Calling '07: Proceedings of the Seventh Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research - Volume 88

Pages 77 - 86

Published: 15 November 2007 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes a qualitative, explorative study of how students understand some concepts in concurrent programming. The study is based on interviews with students regarding the final programming assignment in a concurrent programming course. We use phenomenography to analyse the students' statements about tuple spaces, the concurrent data structures on which the assignments are based, and to find the different ways in which they understand writing and debugging a concurrent program. We then discuss the effects of these understandings on how students construct concurrent programs, how teaching can be improved to form more useful understandings and how software tools can be designed to support the development of concurrent programs.

References

[1]

Andrews, G. R. (2000), Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming, Addison-Wesley.

[2]

Ben-Ari, M. (2006), Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming, second edn, Pearson Education.

Digital Library

[3]

Ben-Ari, M. & Ben-David Kolikant, Y. (1999), Thinking parallel: The process of learning concurrency, in 'Fourth SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education', Cracow, Poland, pp. 13--16.

Digital Library

[4]

Ben-David Kolikant, Y. (2004), 'Learning concurrency as an entry point to the community of computer science practitioners', Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching 23(1), 21--46.

[5]

Berglund, A. (2006), 'Phenomenography as a way to research learning in computing', Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology 4(1).

[6]

Bloom, B. S. (1956), Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain, Addison Wesley.

[7]

Booth, S. (1992), Learning to program: A phenomenographic perspective, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, doctoral dissertation, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

[8]

Eckerdal, A. & Thunéé, M. (2005), 'Novice Java programmers' conceptions of "object" and "class", and variation theory', SIGCSE Bulletin 37(3), 89--93.

Digital Library

[9]

Gelernter, D. (1985), 'Generative communication in Linda', ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 7(1), 80--112.

Digital Library

[10]

Holzmann, G. (1997), 'The model checker Spin', IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering 23(5), 279--295.

Digital Library

[11]

Hughes, C., Buckley, J., Exton, C. & O'Carroll, D. (2005), 'Towards a framework for characterising concurrent comprehension', Computer Science Education 15(1), 7--24.

[12]

Johnson, C. G. & Fuller, U. (2006), Is Bloom's taxonomy appropriate for computer science?, in A. Berglund & M. Wiggberg, eds, 'Proceedings of 6th Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research, Koli Calling', Uppsala University, pp. 120--123.

Digital Library

[13]

Marton, F. (1981), 'Phenomenography --- describing conceptions of the world around us', Instructional science 10, 177--200.

[14]

Marton, F. & Booth, S. (1997), Learning and Awareness, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

[15]

Pears, A. N. (1995), Using the DiST simulator to teach parallel computing concepts, in 'International Forum on Parallel Computing Curricula', Wellesley, Massachusetts.

[16]

Price, B. A., Baecker, R. M. & Small, I. S. (1993), 'A principled taxonomy of software visualization', Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 4(3), 211--266.

[17]

Spohrer, J. C., Soloway, E. & Pope, E. (1985), 'A goal/plan analysis of buggy Pascal programs', Human-Computer Interaction 1, 163--207.

Digital Library

[18]

Visser, W., Havelund, K., Brat, G., Park, S. & Lerda, F. (2003), 'Model checking programs', Automated Software Engineering Journal 10(2), 203--232.

Digital Library

Cited By

Lawson AKraemer E(2024)Example Output: A Sequentialist Rabbit Hole for Students Solving Concurrent ProblemsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699565(1-11)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699565
Lawson AKraemer ERothermel GBae D(2020)Sidekicks and superheroesProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3377814.3381706(82-92)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377814.3381706
Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar MZhang JSherriff MHeckman SCutter PMonge A(2020)Exploring Students' Understanding of Concurrency - A Phenomenographic StudyProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366856(940-946)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328778.3366856
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Students' understandings of concurrent programming

Recommendations

Type-theoretic foundations for concurrent object-oriented programing

A number of attempts have been made to obtain type systems for object-oriented programming. The view that lies common is “object-oriented programming = λ-calculus + record.” Based on an analogous view “concurrent object-oriented programming = concurrent ...
Concurrent object-oriented programming in Classic-Ada

Although Ada supports concurrency and can thus be used as a concurrent programming language, it is not generally considered to be an object-oriented programming language. Classic-Ada is a preprocessor which adds the concepts of classes, inheritance, and ...
Type-theoretic foundations for concurrent object-oriented programing
OOPSLA '94: Proceedings of the ninth annual conference on Object-oriented programming systems, language, and applications

A number of attempts have been made to obtain type systems for object-oriented programming. The view that lies common is “object-oriented programming = λ-calculus + record.” Based on an analogous view “concurrent object-oriented programming = concurrent ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image DL Hosted proceedings

Koli Calling '07: Proceedings of the Seventh Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research - Volume 88

November 2007

231 pages

ISBN:9781920682699

Program Chair:
Raymond Lister
University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Publisher

Australian Computer Society, Inc.

Australia

Publication History

Published: 15 November 2007

Qualifiers

Research-article

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 80 of 182 submissions, 44%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

11
Total Citations
View Citations
132
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)41
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5

Reflects downloads up to 30 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Lawson AKraemer E(2024)Example Output: A Sequentialist Rabbit Hole for Students Solving Concurrent ProblemsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699565(1-11)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699565
Lawson AKraemer ERothermel GBae D(2020)Sidekicks and superheroesProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3377814.3381706(82-92)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377814.3381706
Strömbäck FMannila LKamkar MZhang JSherriff MHeckman SCutter PMonge A(2020)Exploring Students' Understanding of Concurrency - A Phenomenographic StudyProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366856(940-946)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328778.3366856
Strömbäck FIhantola PFalkner N(2019)Students' Views of Concurrency and SynchronizationProceedings of the 19th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3364510.3366166(1-2)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3364510.3366166
Flores PMedinilla NPamplona SSimon Kinnunen P(2014)What do software design students understand about information hiding?Proceedings of the 14th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/2674683.2674697(61-70)Online publication date: 20-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2674683.2674697
Pamplona SMedinilla NFlores PLaakso MSimon (2013)Exploring misconceptions of operating systems in an online courseProceedings of the 13th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/2526968.2526977(77-86)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2526968.2526977
Lönnberg JMalmi LLaakso MMcCartney R(2012)Back to schoolProceedings of the 12th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/2401796.2401802(47-56)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2401796.2401802
Lönnberg JMalmi LBen-Ari MKorhonen AMcCartney R(2011)Evaluating a visualisation of the execution of a concurrent programProceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/2094131.2094139(39-48)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2094131.2094139
Lönnberg JBen-Ari MMalmi LLourenço JFarchi E(2011)Java replay for dependence-based debuggingProceedings of the Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Systems: Testing, Analysis, and Debugging10.1145/2002962.2002967(15-25)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2002962.2002967
Lönnberg JBerglund AMalmi L(2009)How students develop concurrent programsProceedings of the Eleventh Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 9510.5555/1862712.1862732(129-138)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1862712.1862732
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

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

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents