Introducing OO concepts from a class user perspective

The use of an object-oriented language as an introductory language is becoming more widespread (Biddle & Tempero, 1998). However, pedagogical issues relating to the incorporation of such a language are still not understood properly (Kolling, 2001). Approaches to incorporating an object-oriented language into a teaching program vary greatly. Some approaches avoid the issue of object-orientation by putting emphasis on the procedural aspects of the language (Koffman & Wolz, 1999). Others approach the subject from the perspective of a class developer, especially making use of the appeal graphical user interfaces and applets have for students. The approach that we take at the University of Ballarat is to introduce students to programming from the perspective of a class user. This approach is facilitated by the availability of BlueJ (Kolling & Rosenberg, 2001), a program development environment designed explicitly for teaching object-oriented principles using Java. This paper describes this approach and the students' reactions to it