Object oriented quality in introductory programming education

Abstract: Examples are important when we attempt to learn something new. To learn prob-lem solving and programming is an acknowledged difficulty. Teaching and learning introductory object oriented problem solving and programming has been discussed extensively since the late 1990’ies, when a major shift to object orientation as first programming paradigm took place. Initially, this switch was not considered to cause any major problems, because of the accumulated knowledge for how pro-gramming should be taught. This turned out to be naive. Knowledge gained for the imperative paradigm did not apply well to the object oriented paradigm.Because of its importance for the field of computer science, introductory pro- gramming education has drawn a lot of attention. Most of the research done in connection to object oriented problem solving and programming has been focused on students learning and the difficulty to acquire skills in programming.Less investigated is the foundation of the educational mission, the characteris- tics of object orientation and how this is best supported by the educator. There is no obvious agreement of what the basics of object orientation are, especially not from an educational point of view.In this thesis, two major aspects concerning the teaching of object orientation have been investigated: the definition of object oriented quality, specifically in examples for novices, and educators’ views on aspects of object orientation. Based on research of how object orientation is characterised in literature and in software design principles, a set of concepts and principles are presented as a description of basic characteristics of object orientation. These are applied to the educational context, and a number of heuristics, called Eduristics, for the design of object oriented examples for novices are defined. The Eduristics are then used to discuss the flaws and shortcomings of common textbook examples, but also how the object oriented quality of examples can be improved.To be able to evaluate the quality of examples, we initiated and participated in the development of an evaluation tool. This tool has been used to evaluate a number of examples from popular textbooks. The results show that the object oriented quality of examples is low.To explore the ways educators view a number of aspects of object orientation and the teaching of it, ten interviews have been conducted. The results of this study show that the level of abstraction in the conceptual model of object orientation among educators is low, and that novices are not given any support for object oriented problem solving.