Development of pointers software and its effectiveness on program writing skill among computer science graduate students

Abstract

Individuals use the past and present experiences to solve the future problem by means of education. Higher education provides people an opportunity to reflect on the critical, social, economic, cultural, moral and spiritual issues facing humanity. It contributes to national development through dissemination of specialized knowledge and skills. It is therefore a crucial factor for survival. (National Policy on Education, 1986, Para 5, 24). The establishment of more number of Multinational Companies in India reflects the impact of globalization. Among them, the establishments of Information Technology companies are more in number. But, at the time of their establishment, competent and efficient software professionals have been appointed as programmers. The reason behind their success is efficiency in software development. This is attained through the method called POINTER , which is considered as one of the best methods in program development. Most of the computer science graduates failed to show interest towards developing softwares using POINTERS because of its complexity. i.e. manipulating and accessing of memory locations directly. The advantage of use of pointers is its direct reference to the memory locations, which speeds up the process, reduces the execution time, and indirectly improves the efficiency of the program. Whenever the students are taught in classrooms, they find it difficult to understand the concept of pointers because of its complexity. It is better if it would be taught with the latest technology i.e. using educational soft wares, which will help them to learn POINTERS easier and to improve the level of efficiency in program development. Therefore, the investigator decided to make students learning easier, by developing software to teach pointers. The objective of the study is to develop Pointers Software and its effectiveness on teaching computer science.