From software user to software author: an initial pedagogy for Introductory Object-Oriented Mark Woodman and Simon Holland Computing Department The Open University Milton Keynes Computing {m.woodman, Abstract s.holland}@open. ac.uk We describe an initial pedagogy for an introductory computing and programming course which adheres to the object-oriented paradigm. Students must satisfy a prerequisite to be competent users of GUI operating systems and simple applications. The paper explains how their prior knowledge and skills are used to consider abstract object-oriented models of the systems they know before embarking on Smalltalk programming. A novel programming and learning environment which constrains visibility of Smalltalk is described. that any introductory course on computing must be placed in this context of global, networked computing and must reflect the diversity of use of software with the diversity of software development approaches that implies. The paper is organized as follows: in the next section we briefly outline the main aims of the course and its syllabus. Subsequent sections, sketch the initial few weeks of student study. The first week, described in Section 3, allows students to check that they are able to use applications competently and provides them with object-oriented models that explain the operation of
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