Strategies for improving a Java-based, first year programming course

Abstract

Abstract

Experience in teaching object-oriented concepts to first year students with diverse backgrounds

“…In a previous paper [4] it was reported that student performance and feedback from 2000 and 2001 coinciding with the period of the ITP curriculum and resources review proved to be quite successful. However, upon reflection and a closer evaluation of students' work, it became evident that there were still a number of students who were finding the concepts of objectorientation difficult to master.…”

“…This section details the evolution of ITP with reference to the revisions that took place during 2000-2001 (these have been detailed more extensively in [4] and will only be summarised in this section).…”

“…It was decided that students would be asked to submit their weekly exercises for marks and would therefore be "obliged" to, at the very least, attempt the weekly exercises. The improvement in student learning outcomes based on this strategy was presented in [4].…”

“…Student performance and course evaluations from 2000 and 2001 indicated that the newly instituted ITP curriculum proved to be quite successful [4]. In fact over the four semesters, the average student feedback pertaining to the course in general was 2.29 on a scale of one to five (one being the best).…”

Teaching object‐oriented programming with AEIOU

“…In the last few years Java has been adopted in many universities; this programming language has been used to teach object-oriented programming, according to one of the two approaches proposed by several authors ''Imperative first, objectoriented latter'' [4][5][6][7] or ''Object-oriented from the beginning'' [8][9][10][11][12].…”