29 Using a Multi-Term Project to Teach OO Programming and Design

James McKim, Jr., Rensselaer at Hartford

Convention Centre
Room 16

OO is touted as a software technology that promotes reuse, models the problem space, facilitates maintenance, incorporates changes easily, shortens the development lifecycle, encourages good software engineering techniques, and cures the common cold! Any course in Object Oriented Programming and Design should address these claims. One way (perhaps the only way) for students to test such claims and to gain appreciation of the paradigm's benefits and costs, is to participate in the building of a substantial product. This tutorial describes such a course and a project spread over several terms with ongoing enhancements and redesigns. An ongoing, multi-term project has the advantages of being more realistic, exposing students to issues at a depth that simply cannot be attained in a small project, and forcing students to absorb a sizable existing system (or at least some part of it) before they can make changes. The latter requirement is where students see the need for a modeling notation such as UML and for a common set of "tricks of the trade" as exemplified by design patterns.

This tutorial will discuss the positives and negatives of a multi-term project OO course as well as tips for teaching such a course.

Attendee Background: Participants should have a good grasp of the major features of the object oriented paradigm. This tutorial is aimed at people who have taught, or who are interested in teaching, accredited courses in OO programming and design. However, anyone interested in OO Education in any form may benefit.

James C. McKim, Jr. holds a B.A., M.S., Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Iowa, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer, and is currently Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer at Hartford. Dr. McKim has more than twenty years experience teaching mathematics and computer science. He has authored, and coauthored a number of textbooks and articles in both areas. He has been teaching, publishing, and consulting in the OO arena for the past seven years and has given numerous tutorials at OO conferences, including OOPSLA.

Another tutorial especially for educators is:

20: GOF Pursuit - Learning Patterns by Playing

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Last edited 22 September 1998 14:25:11