Titles:

1. [APPROVED - TENTATIVE] The Comprehension of Coding for Complex Java

Projects Based On the Scored Survey Results of Senior High School IT Students from

STI Las Pinas (Correlational Positive)

2. Speed of Senior High School IT Students from STI Las Pinas in Completing Java

Projects Based on Project Complexity (Correlational Negative)

3. How Different Teaching Methods Impact the Comprehension of Senior High School IT

Students for Coding in Java in STI Las Pinas (Descriptive)

Statement of the Problem:

Senior High School (SHS) Information Technology (IT) students in STI College Las Pinas have

been observed struggling with coding projects in programming languages like Java using logic

and algorithms; as a result, IT students continue to struggle with their schoolwork when required

to perform programs using moderate to high levels of logic. This research paper seeks to

determine if the complexity of a Java project’s code makes it harder for IT students from STI

College Las Pinas to comprehend the code’s purpose, especially when involving logic and

algorithms.

General Problem: Does the complexity of a Java project’s code affect the comprehension of IT

students from STI College Las Pinas?

Specific Problems:

1. What is Java?

2. What are the basic concepts in Java?

3. What is logic in Java?

4. What are algorithms in Java?

 5. Does the knowledge of basic Java program functions, such as arithmetic operators,

variables, and if conditions affect the ability for IT students from STI College Las Pinas

to understand how a Java project’s code works?

6. Does the involvement of moderate to high levels of logic affect the ability for IT students

from STI College Las Pinas to understand how a Java project’s code works?

7. Does the inclusion of basic algorithms affect the ability for IT students from STI College

Las Pinas to understand how a Java project’s code works?

Background of the Study:

According to “The Java ecosystem in 2022” (2022), Java is 25 years old and is still emerging and

alive to this day. Java was created by James Gosling and was developed at Sun Microsystems as

an open-source development language. The webpage mentioned that Java helped developers to

write generic code as part of web development. In the later stages of Java, it made web

development simpler because of the added Enterprise Edition features. Java's creator, James

Gosling had 5 goals for Java. He stated that "It had to be simple, object-oriented, and familiar. It

had to be robust and secure. It had to be architecture-neutral and portable. It had to execute with

high performance. It had to be interpreted, threaded, and dynamic." (“The Java ecosystem in

2022,” 2022).

Why is Java still so popular today even though there are tons of programming languages that

have been developed through the years? Based on “The Java ecosystem in 2022” (2022),

Gosling's 5 primary goals for Java are the main reasons why Java is here today. A lot of

technologies today are based on Java development. Some examples of this are organizations like

schools, governments, and healthcare, that have their websites based on Java; applications like
Uber, Spotify, Instagram and as well as some scientific projects are also supported by Java. One

more thing that helped Java rise are its supporting frameworks, according to “List of Java

frameworks.” (2022). There are over 146 Java frameworks, and those frameworks have

supported Java to help developers create better, faster, and more portable applications.

Is Java hard to learn? Some people think it is hard, but most people think it is really simple. In a

poll of 324 Java programmers, whose expertise ranges from beginner to expert, about 75% of the

respondents found Java easy to learn. People just have to learn the syntax, fundamentals, and

practice daily to truly master and understand Java. (Tim Statler, 2019). Another statement said

by Gupta (2019) states that Java uses logic and is neither easy nor hard. Gupta also mentioned

that it is normal for beginners to find it hard because they usually encounter problems, but once

they start practicing and playing with its elements and features, he said the developers will come

to love Java.

Review of Related Literature:

ROBERT

Lundberg and Österdahl (2021) discovered in their research that some of the computer

programmers invest a longer time into reading code than writing it. As a result, comprehensible

code has the potential to dramatically enhance software development and maintenance by

reducing the time required to comprehend current code. Previous research suggested that one’s

choice of the programming paradigm may be a factor in code comprehension. So, in their

research they examine whether Reactive programming has better influence in terms of

comprehending code than the Procedural programming. The researcher selected 2 groups of

participants to address the bugs in code snippets of typical functionality built in Java using either
Reactive Programming or Procedural Programming in the code. First group being software

students with Reactive Programming expertise and second group being experienced software

developers and engineers with less Reactive Programming experience. One’s code

comprehensibility is determined by the time consumption of the participants, with smaller value

having greater comprehensibility and higher value having poorer comprehensibility. All tests

were run using the Code Comparator, a tool that the researchers created. According to Lundberg

and Österdahl (2021), the positive effect is noticeable in the student group, but we are unable to

determine whether the other group solves reactive or procedural puzzles quicker.

Lundberg, M., Österdahl, P. (2021). Java programming paradigm comprehensibility:

Procedural versus Reactive. (Publication No. 1597187). [Bachelor’s Dissertation, Mid Sweden

University, Institute of Computer and Systems Sciences]. Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet.

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1597187/FULLTEXT01.pdf

_____________________________________________________________

CRISTINA/MAT

According to Stapleton et al. (2020), software developers were having a hard time understanding

codes or projects that were poorly documented, written by other developers, or developed using

other kinds of styles. Stapleton's team conducted a human study involving 45 participants from

university students and professional developers. The participants reviewed Java methods and

summaries then answered program comprehension related questions, the participants were tasked

to code given summaries as well for specifications. Stapleton et al. (2020) concluded that

participants performed significantly better using human-written summaries than machine

generated summaries but found no evidence to support the different qualities of human-generated

and machine-generated summaries.

Stapleton, S., Gambhir, Y., LeClair, A., Eberhart, Z., Weimer, W., Leach, K., & Huang, Y.

(2020).

A Human Study of Comprehension and Code Summarization. ICPC '20: Proceedings of the

28th International Conference on Program Comprehension, 28(1), 2-13

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3387904.3389258

ELAINE

According to Qian and Lehman (2017), in basic programming courses, computer science

teachers are challenged to assist students in deepening their grasp of programming and computer

science. Improvements in computer science education are being made. A significant aspect of a

computer science teacher's proficiency is the ability to recognize and correct pupils'

misconceptions. The field of computer science education does not, however, have as much

developed relevant research on this problem as it has in the fields of mathematics and science

education. In this article, we first review pertinent literature on broad definitions of

misconceptions and studies on students' misconceptions and other challenges in beginning

programming. The causes of the challenges are then looked at. The discussion concludes with

approaches and resources for dealing with issues, such as misconceptions.

Qian, Y., & Lehman, J. (2017). Students Misconceptions and Other Difficulties in Introductory

Programming: A Literature Review. ACM Transactions on Computing Education According for

Computing Machinery, 18, 1-24. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3077618

ROAN

According to Tamang et al. (2021), the effectiveness of two instructional strategies for

scaffolding code understanding in learners free self-explanation and a Socratic Method was

investigated in this study through a randomized control experiment. For both professionals and

students, the ability to comprehend source code is essential. Learners' capacities to read code

should be enhanced in order to increase learning and retention in introductory programming

courses, which are notorious for having incredibly high attrition rates due to the difficulty of

programming concepts. To achieve this, the stated experiment intends to evaluate the

effectiveness of various self-explanation induction techniques in order to improve understanding

and learning throughout complex code comprehension and learning activities in introductory

programming courses.

This study presents the findings of a randomized control experiment that evaluated the efficacy

of two instructional approaches for scaffolding code understanding in learners: Free Self-

Explanation and a Socratic Method. According to Jimba and Alshaisk (2021), these results,

prompting self-explanations can be a useful strategy, and guided self-explanations, like those

used in the Socratic method condition, are more effective at causing learning improvements. For

both professionals and students, the ability to comprehend source code is essential. Learners'

capacities to read code should be enhanced in order to increase learning and retention in

introductory programming courses, which are notorious for having incredibly high attrition rates

due to the difficulty of programming concepts.

Tamang, L., Alshaikh, Z., Khayi, N., Oli, P., & Rus, P. (2021). A Comparative Study of Free

Self-Explanations and Socratic Tutoring Explanations for Source Code Comprehension. SIGCSE

'21: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Education, 52, 219-225.

https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432423
Reference List:

Continuum (2022, February 13). The Java ecosystem in 2022.

https://www.continuum.be/blog/the-java-ecosystem-in-2022/?fbclid=IwAR0iRQF-

7KFXqdE6SGm7zUKCfUxdvxCXrl8aLx0L805iTLC888b9M5OjE4k

Stapleton, S., Gambhir, Y., LeClair, A., Eberhart, Z., Weimer, W., Leach, K., & Huang, Y.

(2020, July). A Human Study of Comprehension and Code Summarization. ICPC '20:

Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Program Comprehension, 28(1), 2-

13 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3387904.3389258

Tim Statler (n.d.). Is Java Hard To Learn For A Beginner? The Hard Facts. Comp Sci Central.

https://compscicentral.com/is-java-hard-to-learn/

Wikipedia (2022, August 12). List of Java frameworks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_frameworks