Students' understanding of the concept of interface in a situated context

Abstract

The current paper describes an empirical study with the aim of producing insights about how students experience programming and software engineering. The research aims to investigate the students' world, and hence, we have chosen a phenomenographic approach. Our questions focus on the students' experiences of concepts related to a realistic programming task in an extensive software system, particularly the Java Interface. The results show that there is a distinct variation of descriptions spanning from a concrete to-do list to a more advanced description where the interface plays a crucial role in order to produce dynamic and adaptive systems. We interpret the results and suggest how they can be used in teaching to provide an extended and varied understanding of how to work with advanced software.