A Comparison of Two Object-Oriented Programming Environments for Novices

S. Xinogalos, M. Satratzemi, and V. Dagdilelis (Greece)

Keywords

Object-oriented programming, educational software, educational programming environments, microworlds.

Abstract

Teaching Object Oriented Programming (OOP) to novices is quite problematic. In order to overcome the difficulties various teaching approaches have been proposed. In this paper, we present our findings regarding two teaching approaches based on two different environments: (i) teaching with the Educational Programming Environment of BlueJ; (ii) teaching with the Programming Microworld of objectKarel. The presented results are based on students’ answers to a questionnaire that was given to students at the last lesson of the two studies, and refer exclusively to the comprehension of the most basic concepts of OOP: objects and classes. The analysis of the results shows that the combined use of the two environments seems to constitute a better didactic strategy from just using one of the two environments.

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