ABSTRACT

Many schools have introduced OO component in their curriculum mostly at the CS1 and CS2 levels. Educators are struggling to keep up with the rapid evolution in Object Technology. There is no standard curriculum or charter such as ACM 91 [1] to serve as a guideline as to what to do and how to do it. Most learning techniques such as case study methods and collaborative learning [2] require enormous amount of preparation time, and support. Major objective of this session is to discuss the issues related to introduction of object-oriented (OO) technology in CS curriculum and share some simple, easy to implement ideas and ready to use techniques that the author has successfully implemented in her courses.

Keywords

ACM curriculum, object technology, teaching methods.

1. INTRODUCTION

 

 

The author has been teaching undergraduate courses, in particular CS1 and CS2, for the past 15 years. Also she has been an active participant in the CS1/CS2 evolution. Recently she submitted a position paper and participated in a workshop titled "Future of CS2" in OOPSLA 98 conference. This conference gave her a great opportunity to talk to many educators with widely varying opinions about CS2. But a common goal for many was to find ways to systematically introduce object-oriented principles and design practices and the supporting languages and tools in to their CS undergraduate curriculum. Many proposed methods [2] are time-intensive, and labor-intensive. There is a need for simple and easy just-in-time methods that can supplement the elaborate extensive teaching methods. This session aims to start a dialog among the participants to look at the impact of OO technology on undergraduate curriculum, identify the problems and to come up with easy to implement techniques that can be used in any OO-based course.

2. ISSUES

• What OO principles to teach? When?
• What language?
• What tools?
• Special issues: modeling, tools, patterns and component
• Special environments
• How to develop the CS culture among students?

1. APPROACH

1. Prospective participants will submit a short statement about their problems and needs/solutions. A formal letter of invitation will be sent to participants.

1. Participants take ownership of the proceedings.
2. Workshop can be fine-tuned to address the needs of the participants.

1. Session will begin with some simple techniques that the author uses to make learning and teaching OO technology fun and interesting. Some of them are:

1. Demo-a-day
2. Word association
3. Concept-a-week
4. One liners
5. Interest kindlers

1. EXPECTED OUTCOME

 

 

I expect that participants to take home, a bag of simple and easy to methods that they can use to learn and teach OO technology. The list of ideas collected during the session will also be made available through web or some other means for the benefit of the others that may be interested in this topic.
 

2. REFERENCES

1. ACM Curricula Recommendations Volume1: Computing Curricula 1991: Report of ACM/IEEE-CS joint Curricula Task Force, http://www.acm.org.
2. Smith, K., Cooperative Learning: Making ?GroupWork? Work. Using Active Learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no.67. San Fanscisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.