Abstract:

It is widely accepted that design patterns and pattern language can be a useful tool and method to represent solutions to frequently-occurring design problems, both in architecture where they were originally conceived as well as in many other design related fields. As a result, interest in the possibility of using patterns in teaching systems’ design, implementation and evaluation is growing. The use of patterns in computer science education has been widely researched and debated. There is a lack of empirical research onto the efficacy of patterns in education, and in mainstream design. Dearden and Finlay (2006) suggest that a significant effort is now required to examine the use of patterns in education to confirm what benefits might be gained from a pattern approach. Usability and efficacy are two of the main problems that manifest when patterns are used in education to convey principles to students who lack expertise and experience in the field.
This paper report the use of patterns in computer science education, evaluate their contribution and efficacy in knowledge transfer. We present a critical review of research on the empirical work on the use of HCI patterns in computer science education by specifically studying human computer interaction (HCI) courses. We shall further explore eight key issues: How strong was the experimental design? Did they use experts or naïve students? Do they document the background of participants and therefore address the issue of expertise when assessing the usability and efficacy of patterns? How were the designs evaluated? Were the findings of the paper based on students saying the patterns helped them or was there one stronger way of determining the effects of the patterns? Did the studies claim to provide conclusive evidence of the efficacy of the patterns? If they did, how was it proved? Was there any attempt to follow the students in their careers to see whether they made use of the patterns later? Were the exercises “rich” enough to support pattern usage?
Following on from the review, a future research agenda is proposed for using the pattern concept in computer science education and to contribute by formulating an approach to maximizing the efficacy of patterns, especially for the novice user (students), arguably the most important target audience.

Keywords:

Patterns, HCI, Review, Experiment, Education