Avoiding object misconceptions

ABSTRACT

This paper identifies and describes a number of misconceptions observed in students learning about object technology. It identifies simple, concrete, measures course designers and teachers can take to avoid these misconceptions arising. The context for this work centres on an introductory undergraduate course and a postgraduate course. Both these courses are taught by distance education. These courses both use Smalltalk as an introduction to object technology. More particularly, the undergraduate course uses Smalltalk as a first programming language.Distance education can limit the amount and speed of individual feedback that can be given in the early stages of learning. For this reason, particular attention has been paid to characterizing measures for avoiding elementary misconceptions seen in beginning learners. At the same time we also address some misconceptions observed in postgraduate students. The pedagogical issues discussed are of particular importance when devising an extended series of examples for teaching or assessment, or when designing a visual microworld to be used for teaching purposes.

REFERENCES

• 1: Kent Beck, Smalltalk: best practice patterns, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1996
• 2: Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R. and Vlissides, J. Design Patterns, Addison Wesley, New York, 1995.
• 3: Prieto, Maximo. The importance of learning Objectoriented thinking, Proceedings of Workshop on Learning, Training and Teaching in Object Technology, part of European Conference on Object Oriented Programming, Aarhus, Denmark, 1995.
• 4: Le~nardi, C., Prieto, M., Rossi, G., Levato, A., Echarri, F., Maciel, R. Micro-worlds: A tool for learning object-oriented modeling and problem solving. Proceedings of Educators Symposium, OOPSLA "94, Portland Oregon (October 1994).
• 5: Mark Woodman , Simon Holland, From software user to software author: an initial pedagogy for introductory object-oriented computing, Proceedings of the 1st conference on Integrating technology into computer science education, p.60-62, June 02-06, 1996, Barcelona, Spain

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Curriculum; Computer science education

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Management, Performance, Theory