workshops

sunday

This workshop will focus on design evaluation for educators involved in introducing object-oriented design at an early point in computer science education. This will continue the work begun at OOPSLA `96 with our workshop on "Teaching and Learning Object Design in the First Year." We see an increased and early emphasis on design as an important step forward in OO education.

The original workshop resulted in agreement that object-oriented design should be emphasized to a greater extent in the early stages of computer science education. However, we also identified some key difficulties to making progress. We saw the need to foster creation and sharing of resources to support early OO design: we addressed this need in our OOPSLA `97 workshop, and created a web repository. Other difficulties we saw concerned evaluating design at an early stage and communicating to students what "good" design means: we plan to address these issues specifically at OOPSLA `98.

Design evaluation is an important subject both from the perspective of software engineering, and the perspective of pedagogy. Students must understand that any design has consequences, and they must themselves learn how to determine good and bad consequences that may flow from design decisions. Educators must lead students through this process, facilitate their learning, and also provide critical guidance. Moreover, evaluation also relates to practical issues of concern to many educators, including student assessment, team-building, and management of large groups.

Organizer:

Robert Biddle, Victoria University
Email: robert@mcs.vuw.ac.nz
http://www.bk.psu.edu/faculty/mercer/design/index.html  

Rick Mercer, Penn State Berks
Eugene Wallingford, University of Northern Iowa