Mandurah 2K Tenth University of Western Australia Computer Science Research Conference "Research Directions for the New Millennium" Mandurah Gates Resort, April 27-28, 2000

Michael Kölling

Invited Speaker (Academic)

Michael Kölling studied computer science in Bremen, Germany, where he graduated in 1992. In 1993 he went to Sydney University on an academic exchange program for a stay that was planned for one year. Sydney, however, proved too attractive to leave after the year was up, and Michael stayed to take up a position and complete a PhD at Sydney University. In 1997, Michael changed to Monash University where he now works as a lecturer.

For the last five years he has worked in the areas of programming environments, languages and computer science education, focussing on introductory teaching of programming. This work has resulted in the development of a first year programming language and environment named Blue. A Java version of the environment (named BlueJ) has also been developed and its implementation is being used by numerous universities around the world for introductory Java teaching.

Abstract

The Challenge of Teaching First Year Students With Java

Teaching object-orientation in first year has become commonplace in many universities over the last few years. While the idea of teaching modern software engineering principles to first year students using an object-oriented language has slowly become accepted, many teachers experience severe difficulties in implementing such a course. Understanding the cause of these difficulties is an important step to improving the course quality.

In this talk, I will present my views of the changing requirements, the resulting difficulties and our attempts at solutions to the problems. I will report about experiences with our object-oriented first year course and BlueJ, a tool we use to ease the pain.

Last modified: Wed Apr 19 19:04:40 WST 2000