The gap between knowledge and ability

We present the results of an investigation on how well students are able to understand object-oriented programming (OOP) when learning with only very minimal guidance. We analyzed the source code that the students of a preparatory course produced during the course as well as concept maps that they were asked to draw before and after the course. Our findings show, that there are observable differences between what students know about some concepts and what they're able to do with it. Generally speaking, it seems that several OOP related concepts can be applied successfully without fully understanding the underlying concepts, while others are hard to understand and apply without a significant amount of prior knowledge. This gives rise to the suspicion that it might be possible to apply a concept without having understood it, at least with respect to some algorithmic concepts of CS.