Developing an Object-Oriented Curriculum

Abstract

Traditional introductory computer science curricula do not address the emerging paradigm of object-oriented programming. The purpose of this research is to determine when object-orientation should be introduced into the computer science curriculum and what is the proper instructional approach to present this material. This thesis looks at the concepts incorporated by the object-oriented paradigm, explores the developmental psychology applicable to understanding new environments and proposes an introductory object-oriented curriculum that incorporates the fundamentals of learning, computer science and object-oriented programming. The object-oriented curriculum proposed provides a top-down approach to the conceptual foundations of computer science with a bottom-up approach to object-oriented programming. This combination of approaches provides the necessary breadth of coverage in algorithms, data structures, programming analysis and object-oriented modeling with an initial in-depth look at the mechanics of programming. Object-oriented programming instruction, Computer science curriculum, Teaching introductory computer science.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA285185

Entities

People

  • Curtis H. Loehr

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Engineered Resilient Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Curriculum
  • Education
  • Information Processing
  • Materials
  • Object Oriented Programming
  • Object-Oriented Programming Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Psychology
  • Reasoning
  • Software Development
  • Software Development Tools
  • Structured Programming
  • Students

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • STEM Education