The Effects of Objects-First and Objects-Late Methods on Achievements of OOP Learners

Murat Pasa Uysal

Rochester Institute of Technology, Saunders College of Business, Department of MIS and Decision Sciences, Rochester, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2012.510094                

Abstract

Our research explored the effects of objects-first and objects-late methods on achievements of object-oriented pro-gramming (OOP) learners during a graduate course. The course’s scope was virtually identical for two groups, but the structure of the contents differed in sequence. The objects-first method emphasized the design and discussion of the object-oriented concepts from the very beginning while the objects-late deferred these concepts to the late lectures. The objects-first learners used all visual functionalities of BlueJ IDE. However, the objects-late learners started with only the text-based interfaces of BlueJ and they benefited its visual support in the last lectures. At the end of the study, we found that there was a statistically significant difference between OOP learner groups.

Keywords

Object-Oriented Programming; Objects-First; Objects-Late

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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