Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING COURSE
The graduate-level object-oriented programming course within the MSIT program of
the Computer Information Systems (CIS) Department at Bentley College was taught for the
first time in the fall of 2001 to 58 Masters students in three sections. There are no prerequisites,
as this is one of three foundation courses that all incoming MSIT students must take. Most
of the enrolled students did not have significant prior programming experience. On a scale
from one (
novice/beginner
) to seven (
expert
), the average student experience level was 3.14
± 1.78. Figure 1 shows the distribution of these self-rankings.
Given the generally low level of programming experience, a proactive approach was
taken to support students in what for many was their first exposure to programming.
Following are descriptions of choices that were made for enhancing the learning
experience without adding to student anxiety about learning to program in Java.
Supporting Materials
An early and critical decision concerned which integrated development environment
(IDE) to use in this course. After extensive trials with a number of environments, the Borland®
JBuilder IDE was selected due to the strength of its built-in help facilities and its tools for
writing, running, and debugging code. While it can be confusing at first, JBuilder is easier
to use than most of the professional environments used in industry (Savitch, 2001). Plus,
several students expressed interest in working with JBuilder because it was being used in their
own work environments.
JBuilder was installed on the computers in all of the technology classrooms and in the
student computer labs. Students could also download their own copies from the Web for use
on their personal computers, but were encouraged to try JBuilder first in the CIS Department's
student lab, where student assistants were available to help them. Students were shown how
Figure 1. Self-ranking of prior programming experience
30.0
25.0
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Experience Rating
