A game-based approach to the teaching of object-oriented programming languages

Students often have difficulties when trying to understand the concepts of object-oriented programming (OOP). This paper presents a contribution to the teaching of OOP languages through a game-oriented approach based on the interaction with tangible user interfaces (TUIs). The use of a specific type of commercial distributed TUI (Sifteo cubes), in which several small physical devices have sensing, wireless communication and user-directed output capabilities, is applied to the teaching of the C# programming language, since the operation of these devices can be controlled by user programs written in C#. For our experiment, we selected a sample of students with a sufficient knowledge about procedural programming, which was divided into two groups: The first one had a standard introductory C# course, whereas the second one had an experimental C# course that included, in addition to the contents of the previous one, two demonstration programs that illustrated some OOP basic concepts using the TUI features. Finally, both groups completed two tests: a multiple-choice exam for evaluating the acquisition of basic OOP concepts and a C# programming exercise. The analysis of the results from the tests indicates that the group of students that attended the course including the TUI demos showed a higher interest level (i.e. they felt more motivated) during the course exposition than the one that attended the standard introductory C# course. Furthermore, the students from the experimental group achieved an overall better mark. Therefore, we can conclude that the technological contribution of Sifteo cubes – used as a distributed TUI by which OOP basic concepts are represented in a tangible and a visible way – to the teaching of the C# language has a positive influence on the learning of this language and such basic concepts

Guidelines for Teaching Object Orientation with Java

How to best teach object orientation to first year students is currently a topic of much debate. One of the tools suggested to aid in this task is BlueJ, an integrated development environment specifically designed for teaching. BlueJ supports a unique style of introduction of OO concepts. In this paper we discuss a set of problems with OO teaching, present some guidelines for better course design and show how BlueJ can be used to make significant improvements to introductory OO courses. We end by esenting a description of a possible project sequence using this teaching approach

Rational's experience using Ada for very large systems

The experience using the Rational Environment has confirmed the advantages forseen when the project was started. Interactive syntatic and semantic information makes a tremendous difference in the ease of constructing programs and making changes to them. The ability to follow semantic references makes it easier to understand exisiting programs and the impact of changes. The integrated debugger makes it much easier to find bugs and test fixes quickly. Taken together, these facilites have helped greatly in reducing the impact of ongoing maintenance of the ability to produce a new code. Similar improvements are anticipated as the same level of integration and interactivity are achieved for configuration management and version control. The environment has also proven useful in introducing personnel to the project and existing personnel to new parts of the system. Personnel benefit from the assistance with syntax and semantics; everyone benefits from the ability to traverse and understand the structure of unfamiliar software. It is often possible for someone completely unfamiliar with a body of code to use these facilities, to understand it well enough to successfully with a body of code to use these facilities to understand it well enough to successfully diagnose and fix bugs in a matter of minutes

Towards a debugging tutor for object-oriented environments

Programming has provided a rich domain for Artificial Intelligence in Education and many systems have been developed to advise students about the bugs in their programs, either during program development or post-hoc. Surprisingly few systems have been developed specifically to teach debugging. Learning environment builders have assumed that either the student will be taught these elsewhere or thatthey will be learnt piecemeal without explicit advice.This paper reports on two experiments on Java debugging strategy by novice programmers and discusses their implications for the design of a debugging tutor for Java that pays particular attention to how students use the variety of program representations available. The experimental results are in agreement with research in the area that suggests that good debugging performance is associated with a balanced use ofthe available representations and a sophisticated use of the debugging step facility which enables programmers to detect and obtain information from critical momentsin the execution of the program. A balanced use of the available representations seemsto be fostered by providing representations with a higher degree of dynamic linkingas well as by explicit instruction about the representation formalism employed in the program visualisations

Computing as the 4th “R”: a general education approach to computing education

Computing and computation are increasingly pervading our lives, careers, and societies - a change driving interest in computing education at the secondary level. But what should define a "general education" computing course at this level? That is, what would you want every person to know, assuming they never take another computing course? We identify possible outcomes for such a course through the experience of designing and implementing a general education university course utilizing best-practice pedagogies. Though we nominally taught programming, the design of the course led students to report gaining core, transferable skills and the confidence to employ them in their future. We discuss how various aspects of the course likely contributed to these gains. Finally, we encourage the community to embrace the challenge of teaching general education computing in contrast to and in conjunction with existing curricula designed primarily to interest students in the field