Masita Abdul Jalil

The Difficulties of Using Design Patterns among Novices: An Exploratory Study

Elements of design patterns have been incorporated in computer science syllabus. Most of these efforts have been motivated by the benefits offered by patterns as well as positive feedback from the industry and software community. Despite various techniques and approaches suggested by researchers and educators to ensure effective learning of patterns, there is no formal reports on the actual difficulties encountered by these novices when applying patterns. Thus, we have conducted an exploratory study to identify the difficulties they have in using patterns.

Assisting students in applying design pattern solution

Design patterns represent true and tried solutions to software design problems that kept recurring under different contexts. While the benefits of design patterns have been acknowledged by many, it is not intuitive for students to readily select and use applicable pattern solutions. This paper therefore looks closely at the problems associated with pattern application and proposes a design of a support tool that could aid students in performing such a task. The tool is designed under a problem-solving environment and comprises of three major components; the user interface, the domain module and the problem / solution module. Guidance is given in the form of feedback to help students recognise and correct any errors they made, and as a mean to ensure that they are on the right track.