Objects from the beginning - with GUIs

Proulx, Viera K.; Raab, J.; Rasala, Richard

doi:10.1145/544414.544436

Cited by 29 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 6 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%

“…3). Myriad software tools and even full-blown languages have been developed to help meet the challenge of an objects first approach (see for example, Barnes & Kölling, 2002;Bergin, Stehlik, Roberts, & Pattis, 2006;Cooper et al, 2003;Kölling, 1999aKölling, , 1999bKölling et al, 2003;Kölling & Rosenberg 1996, 2001Proulx et al, 2002). These tools generally have a strong visual/graphical component and incorporate interactivity to reduce the complexity that novice programmers must overcome, helping them "see" objects in a meaningful context.…”

Section: Objects Firstmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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%

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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“…This enables the students to learn from day one about visual GUI components that are -objects‖ and that -inherit‖ from certain -classes‖; which, in turn, helps them grasp objectorientation concepts early on and then move towards the structural/procedural concepts (Decker & Hirshfield, 1999;Proulx, Raab, & Rasala, 2002). GUI components are able to offer a more advanced interface console applications that are typically no more than -black screens‖ covered in static text (Martinez, 2011).…”

Section: Gui-firstmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching GUI-Programming Concepts to Prospective K12 ICT Teachers: MIT App Inventor as an Alternative to Text-Based Languages

Mihci¹,

Dönmez²

2017

International Journal of Research in Education and Science

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The purpose of this research is to investigate the short and long-term effects of using GUI-oriented visual Blocks-Based Programming languages (BBL) as a 2 nd tier tool when teaching programming to prospective K12 ICT teachers. In a mixed-method approach, the effect on academic success as well as the impact on professional opinions and preferences have been gathered for drawing deeper conclusions. Conclusively, it was understood that visual BBL increased success for students who were previously having a hard time dealing with text-based programming. However, students that were already accustomed to text-based programming have shown failure adapting to the BBL. This has been interpreted as a failure of previous programming courses in terms of enabling learning transfer. Additionally, it has been understood that employing the BBL has not been entirely effective in causing prospective ICT teachers to think that programming is a subject suitable for a considerably younger target audience.

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“…Proulx et al [19] also claim that the students who learn objectsfirst must deal with many different concepts, ideas and skills, almost concurrently. Each of these presents a different mental challenge.…”

Section: Background 11 Shifting To Object-oriented Programmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Has the paradigm shift in CS1 a harmful effect on data structures courses

Gal‐Ezer

Vilner

Zur

2009

Proceedings of the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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The ongoing debate among Computer Science educators about the advantages and disadvantages of the shift from the procedural to the Object-Oriented paradigm usually relates to the introductory course. Indeed, we were also concerned when in our institute we decided to implement this shift in our introductory course and started to teach Java, instead of a procedural paradigm. In our previous study we saw that the effect of the shift did not lower the achievements of students taking the CS1 course. Furthermore, we wanted to be equally sure that this was the case when students take Data Structures courses. This is the focus of the study presented in this paper. The results show that there is no significant difference in the achievements of students who came from different paradigm backgrounds. This encouraging result probably relates to the fact that our CS1 course focuses on the fundamentals of introductory Computer Science and does not only emphasize the language aspects.

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Objects from the beginning - with GUIs

Cited by 29 publications

References 6 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

Teaching GUI-Programming Concepts to Prospective K12 ICT Teachers: MIT App Inventor as an Alternative to Text-Based Languages

Has the paradigm shift in CS1 a harmful effect on data structures courses

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