Guidelines for teaching object orientation with Java

Kölling, Michael; RosenbergJohn,

doi:10.1145/507758.377461

Cited by 50 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Many teachers have found that an "objects first" or "objects early" approach is most effective when teaching OO programming to beginners (Barnes & Kölling, 2002;Cooper, Dunn, & Pausch, 2003;Kölling et al, 2003;Kölling & Rosenberg, 2001;Machanick, 2007;Proulx, Raab, & Rasala, 2002). This is in contrast to the older, more traditional approach of beginning with structured programming "in the small," which is suited to teaching procedural languages, but is considered by many to be less appropriate to the OO paradigm.…”

Section: Objects Firstmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effectiveness of Screencasts and Cognitive Tools as Scaffolding for Novice Object-Oriented Programmers

Lee

Pradhan²,

Dalgarno³

2008

JITE:Research

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Executive SummaryModern information technology and computer science curricula employ a variety of graphical tools and development environments to facilitate student learning of introductory programming concepts and techniques. While the provision of interactive features and the use of visualization can enhance students' understanding and assist them in grasping fundamental ideas, the real difficulty for many students lies in making the transition from relying on the graphical features of these tools, to actually writing programming code statements in accordance with a set of plain English instructions.This article opens with a systematic review of the literature on alternative approaches to teaching object-oriented programming (OOP) to novice programmers. It then describes the rationale behind an "objects first, class user first" approach to introducing OOP, arguing for the use of interactive GUI-based visualization tools such as BlueJ as cognitive tools to allow learners to represent and manipulate their mental models or schemas. Finally, it reports on a study involving a cohort of students undertaking an introductory OOP unit in Java. The study investigated the effectiveness of: (i) the graphical features of BlueJ as a cognitive tool while performing coding tasks as part of a test; and (ii) the use of screencasts (video screen captures) of BlueJ to provide scaffolding during learning, which involves the provision of temporary support structures to assist learners in attaining the next stage or level in their development. The screencasts were used in conjunction with a series of structured exercises by providing an intermediate stepping stone to ease the transition to the writing of program code.The study found no significant effect of screencasts during the learning phase of the study, and no significant effect of BlueJ during testing. This result runs counter to theoretical predictions and consequently is important both for researchers focusing on the pedagogy associated with learning programming as well as those interested in the broader applications of animated instructional resources and cognitive tools.In the article, the authors postulate a number of reasons for the lack of significant effects to sup-port their hypotheses. Firstly, it is possible that Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission. Screencasts and Cognitive Tools for Novice ...

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Section: Objects Firstmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effectiveness of Screencasts and Cognitive Tools as Scaffolding for Novice Object-Oriented Programmers

Lee

Pradhan²,

Dalgarno³

2008

JITE:Research

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“…BlueJ is another prominent visual tool for teaching Java programming [Kölling and Rosenberg 2001]. The main visualization feature of BlueJ is its ability to program through the creation of interactive class diagrams.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodology and architecture of JIVE

Gestwicki

Jayaraman

2005

Proceedings of the 2005 ACM Symposium on Software Visualization

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A novel approach to the runtime visualization and analysis of object-oriented programs is presented and illustrated through a prototype system called JIVE: J ava I nteractive V isualization E nvironment. The main contributions of JIVE are: multiple concurrent representations of program state and execution history; support for forward and reverse execution; and graphical queries over program execution. This model facilitates program understanding and interactive debugging. Our visualization of runtime states clarifies the important point that objects are environments of execution. The history of object interaction is displayed via sequence diagrams, and in this way we help close the loop between design-time and run-time representations. Interactive execution is made possible by maintaining a runtime history database, which may be queried for information on variable behavior, method executions, and object interactions. We illustrate the capabilities of this system through examples. JIVE is implemented using the Java Platform Debugger Architecture and supports the Java language and libraries, including multithreaded and GUI applications.

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“…Difficult to learn, programming skills are difficult to teach too (Allison, Orton & Powell, 2002), not least because "traditional teaching methods do not adapt well to the domains of coding and problem solving, as it is a skill best learned through experience" (Traynor & Gibson, 2004, p. 2). According to Kölling and Rosenberg (2001), the situation is even more challenging when it comes to teaching object-oriented programming to beginning students as "software tools, teaching support material and teachers' experience all are less mature than the equivalent for structured programming" (p. 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Befriending Computer Programming: A Proposed Approach to Teaching Introductory Programming

Miliszewska

Tan

2007

Proceedings of the 2007 InSITE Conference

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The problems encountered by students in first year computer programming units are a common concern in many universities including Victoria University. A fundamental component of a computer science curriculum, computer programming is a mandatory unit in a computing course. It is also one of the most feared and hated units by many novice computing students who, having failed or performed poorly in a programming unit, often drop out from a course. This article discusses some of the difficulties experienced by first year programming students, and reviews some of the initiatives undertaken to counter the problems. The article also reports on the first stage of a current research project at Victoria University that aims to develop a balanced approach to teaching first year programming units; its goal is to 'befriend' computer programming to help promote success among new programming students.

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Guidelines for teaching object orientation with Java

Cited by 50 publications

References 3 publications

The Effectiveness of Screencasts and Cognitive Tools as Scaffolding for Novice Object-Oriented Programmers

The Effectiveness of Screencasts and Cognitive Tools as Scaffolding for Novice Object-Oriented Programmers

Methodology and architecture of JIVE

Befriending Computer Programming: A Proposed Approach to Teaching Introductory Programming

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