Comparing Flowchart and Swim Lane Activity Diagram for Aiding Transitioning to Object-Oriented Implementation

Abstract

Object Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm is one of the programming styles that emerged in response to the challenge of designing complex software. However, students find it hard to conceptualize objects when they were already accustomed to non Object Oriented approach to programming. This paper hypothesizes that introducing Object Oriented (OO) notations to students during the design phase will smoothen their transition to Object Oriented Programming. To test the hypothesis, an experiment was conducted with the students of Al-Qalam University Katsina, Nigeria. The participating students were divided into two groups: (i) Flowchart group - representing the classical approach where flowcharts were used to design solutions. (ii) Activity Diagram group - which represents the control group in which swim lane activity diagram, as Object Oriented notation, was introduced to them at the design phase. Both groups were later introduced to Class Responsibility Collaborators (CRC) cards as an Object Oriented implementation model. The students were tested, four different times, on how well they converted flowcharts or activity diagrams, as the case may be, into Class Responsibility Collaborators cards, and their performances were recorded. The results were analyzed using Repeated Measure Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Unexpectedly, the Flowchart group outperformed the Activity Diagram group but the results were not statistically significant. Similarly, there was no statistical difference between males’ and females’ performances.