Outline EXPERIENCE WITH TWO OOP LANGUAGES IN ONE COURSE. HISTORY Methodology and learning design of the course Experience from classes

Transcription

1 EXPERIENCE WITH TWO OOP LANGUAGES IN ONE COURSE Ana Madevska Bogdanova, FCSE, Skopje, Macedoia Outline HISTORY Methodology and learning design of the course Experience from classes Lectures exercises Questionnaire Result statistic Conclusion

2 1. History Academic year Joining two institutions FCSE First semester Structural programming language: C Second semester OOP language? C++ or Java Why not both of them? YES 2. Teaching Methodology Highly interactive face-to-face style of teaching. Every teaching unit is prepared and performed with PowerPoint slides, that contain the teaching essence planned for the week. Each theme is accompanied with parts or complete code of a given problem. The slides contain questions and programming puzzles - parts of a code of a given problem. simple OO problems, convenient to use for discussions and mutual exploring towards the solution.

3 and Learning Design 2 hours lectures, 2 hours theoretical and 2 hours of lab exercises per week. The lectures cover the basic principles of OOP, supported by code parts for illustration. The theoretical exercises expose the students to problems that are simple enough to be analyzed during the 2 hours, but also illustrative and realistic to be interesting. For the lab classes, the students are divided in groups of 20. They solve programming problems that are graded weekly, and form the part of the course final grade. Recommended books for the course (1) НРС - вовед Prata S., C++ Primer Plus, the Waite Group, Stroustrup B., The C+ + Programming Language, Third Edition, AddisonWesley,

4 Recommended books for the course (2) НРС - вовед Danny Kalev, ANSI/ISO C++ Professional Programmer's Handbook (Que Professional Series), 1999 Eckel B., Thinking in C++, 2nd Edition, Recommended books for the course (3) НРС - вовед C++ How to Program (8th Edition) by Paul Deitel and Harvey Deitel, Prentice Hall, C++ Annotations by Frank B. Brokken, (v 9.1.0), us/ 8

5 Recommended books for the course (4) НРС вовед The Java Tutorial, Oracle / Ivor Horton's Beginning Java, Wrox, Recommended books for the course (5) НРС вовед Thinking in Java, 4th edition by Bruce Eckel Web resources 10

6 3. The week-to-week experience First confusion, how it will be like???? First 6 weeks C++ Structural C++ Classes, objects, constructors, destructors Operator overload Inheritance, abstract classes Virtual functions, Polymorphism Multiple inheritance FIRST partial exam C++ 3. The week-to-week experience Next 5 weeks JAVA The same OOP topics But with JAVA specific feauters Garbage collector, polymorphism, downcasting, upcasting, exceptions SECOND partial exam - Java

7 Main benefit We could emphasize the differences between the two languages Students showed great interest Exams? Always two OOP problems C++ Java Equally evaluated, 50% each

8 But, what do the students think? Is the workload overwhelming? Do all the students feel the same? Is it hard to learn two different OOP language syntaxes in one semester? 4. Questionnaire Short one 6 questions General picture Answered from different categories of students ALL The best Average

9 Q1 I was attending the lectures/exercises : а % b % c. <50% Q2 My partial exam-results: а) > 80% b) 60 80% c) 40 60% d) < 40 % e) I didn t attend

10 Q3 Learning two OOP languages in one course а) required normal effort b) wasn t easy nor hard c) required lot of effort and time Q4 Studying the first OOP - C++ а) wasn t very hard b) it was hard, but there was enough time to learn all the parts c) it was too hard and I couldn t learn the given material

11 Q5 Learning ЈAVA а) was easier task as a second OOP language b) as a second OOP language was the same difficulty as learning first OOP c) was difficult and I couldn t manage Q6 the last one Laboratory exercises helped me to learn both languages C++ and Јava а) very much b) not much c) not at all

12 Q7 Write what was the best and / or the worst part of the course What questions can be answered with this questionnaire? Answers from three different student profiles 1. The most popular answer among the ALL students 2. The Best students answers Passed the Structured language course from previous semester Showed good results on the first partial exam (>50%) 3. Average students answers Showed <60% on the first partial exam Some of them didn t pass the SP course

13 Q3: Learning two OOP languages in one course Question 3 PERCENTAGE % ALL (300) BEST (135) Average (180) required normal effort wasn t easy nor hard required lot of effort and time Q4:Stydiing the first OOP - C++ Question 4 wasn t very hard PERCENTAGE % ALL (300) BEST (135) Average (180) it was hard, but there was enough time to learn all the parts it was too hard and I couldn t learn the given material

14 Q5:Learning JAVA Question 5 PERCENTAGE % ALL (300) BEST (135) was easier task as a second OOP language as a second OOP language was the same difficulty as learning first OOP language was difficult and I couldn t manage Average (180) Q6:Laboratory exercises helped me to learn both languages C++ and JAVA Question 6 very much not much not at all PERCENTAGE % ALL (300) BEST (135) Average (180)

15 Q7 Mostly mentioned answers Liked the organization of the course The course team was highly rated Learning two languages was too difficult (about 35% of the answers) Fancied the female assistants Passed the course, two generations 2011/ /2013 ~100 students, one group, independently drawn objects According their surnames

16 First generation 2011/ students in the group 51% has passed 10 (A) 15 9 (B) 4 8 (C) 8 7 (D) 11 6 (E) - 13 Second generation 2012 / 2013 Only one exam session so far (june) August + January to go 119 in the group So far 35% has passed the exam 10 (A) 12 9 (B) 4 8 (C) 9 7 (D) 7 6 (E) - 9

17 Conclusions We believe that this dynamics suite the students and they are well prepared to continue with the Algorithms and Data structures in the 3 rd semester, as well as with the courses about the advanced programming on a different platforms According the questionnaire, it is not too demanding to have two OOP languages workload