Teaching OO concepts - a new approach

Abstract

In recent years, students have become less active, resulting in lower attendance in lectures and practical sessions. In addition to this, the number of students enlisting in our programmes has decreased. Moreover the passing rates for initial courses have dropped severely. This generates problems because the students failing first year courses cannot move on to higher level courses. Not only can this be devastating for individual students, but it can also affect the variety of higher level courses. In an attempt to prevent these problems we focused on the introductory programming courses (CS1) in order to enhance the opportunities for the students to become successful. One action taken was a research project initiated to radically change the way object-oriented programming is taught in CS1. Another action was to introduce the supplemental instruction programme (SI). SI helps students master content while they develop and integrate learning and study strategies. This paper will give a short introduction to these actions. Results are presented along with a discussion concerning the problems in teaching object-oriented concepts and problem solving.