04:00 - 04:30

• Does Outside-In Teaching Improve the Learning of Object-Oriented Programming?

  Object-oriented programming (OOP) is widely used in the software industry and university introductory courses today. Following the structure of most textbooks, such courses frequently are organised starting with the concepts of imperative and structured programming and only later introducing OOP. An alternative approach is to begin directly with OOP following the Outside-In teaching method as proposed by Meyer. Empirical results for the effects of Outside-In teaching on students and lecturers are sparse, however. We describe the conceptual design and empirical evaluation of two OOP introductory courses from different universities based on Outside-In teaching. The evaluation results are compared to those from a third course serving as the control group, which was taught OOP the "traditional" way. We evaluate the initial motivation and knowledge of the participants and the learning outcomes. In addition, we analyse results of the end term exams and qualitatively analyse the results of interviews with the lecturers and tutors. Regarding the learning outcomes, the results show no significant differences between the Outside-In and the "traditional" teaching method. In general, students found it harder to solve and implement algorithmic problems than to understand object oriented (OO) concepts. Students taught OOP by the Outside-In method, however, were less afraid that they would not pass the exam at the end of term and understood the OO paradigm more quickly. Therefore, the Outside-In method is no silver bullet for teaching OOP regarding the learning outcomes but has positive effects on motivation and interest.

   

  Preprint available:

Erica Janke; Philipp Brune; Stefan Wagner

Hochschule Neu-Ulm, Germany; University of Stuttgart, Germany

04:30 - 05:00

• Active and Inductive Learning in Software Engineering Education

  If software engineering education is done in a traditional lecture-oriented style students have no other choice than believing that the solutions they are told actually work for a problem that they never encountered themselves. In order to overcome this problem, this paper describes an approach which allows students to better understand why software engineering and several of its core methods and techniques are needed, thus preparing them better for their professional life. This approach builds on active and inductive learning. Exercises that make students actively discover relevant software engineering issues are described in detail together with their pedagogical underpinning.

Yvonne Sedelmaier; Dieter Landes

University of Applied Sciences and Arts Coburg, Germany

05:00 - 05:30

• In Search of the Emotional Design Effect in Programming

  A small number of recent studies have suggested that learning is enhanced when the illustrations in instructional materials are designed to appeal to the learners' emotions through the use of color and the personification of key elements. We sought to replicate this emotional design effect in the context of introductory object-oriented programming (OOP). In this preliminary study, a group of freshmen studied a text on objects which was illustrated using anthropomorphic graphics while a control group had access to abstract graphics. We found no significant difference in the groups' scores on a comprehension post-test, but the experimental group spent substantially less time on the task than the control group. Among those participants who had no prior programming experience, the materials inspired by emotional design were perceived as less intelligible and appealing and led to lower self-reported concentration levels. Although this result does not match the pattern of results from earlier studies, it shows that the choice of illustrations in learning materials matters and calls for more research that addresses the limitations of this preliminary study.

Lassi Haaranen; Petri Ihantola; Juha Sorva; Arto Vihavainen

Aalto University, Finland; Tampere University of Technology, Finland; University of Helsinki, Finland