Learning Object-Oriented Programming

Ola Berge (1) , Richard Edvin Borge (2) , Annita Fjuk (1) , Jens Kaasbøll (2) , Terje Samuelsen (2)

1 InterMedia
2 UiO - University of Oslo

Loud discussions concerning various ways of teaching object-orientation have taken place without much empirical evidence for any position. This paper reports qualitative observations of learning of object-ori-ented programming in an introductory course. The students were found to cope reasonably well with the object-oriented concepts, and they had learnt procedural programming first. However, they modeled the real world domain to be represented in the program by imagination and through coding. Their problems may be attributed to the high complexity generated by having to relate to four - six areas of attention. Three ways of improving teaching are suggested, making the areas of attention and the ways to relate them more explicit for the students, forcing modeling by means of a tool, and reducing complexity by means of programming environments that visualize objects and their behavior.

Domains: Technology for Human Learning

Ola Berge, Richard Edvin Borge, Annita Fjuk, Jens Kaasbøll, Terje Samuelsen. Learning Object-Oriented Programming. Norsk informatikkonferanse 2003, 2003, Oslo, Norway. 11 p. ⟨hal-00190184⟩