Development of programming projects for object-oriented programming courses: from console to GUI applications
Jiang Li · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2014
Students in CS1 and CS2 often find learning object-oriented programming a very difficult task due to the intrinsic complexity of the concepts. This paper discusses how instructors may develop a series of mini projects to help students grasp fundamental object-oriented design principles and foster their programming skills. These mini projects, which consist of two console applications and a Windows application, cover basic object-oriented programming principles, such as encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, as well as advanced topics including static members, interfaces, delegates and events, and object serialization. The feedback and evaluations from the students demonstrated the effectiveness of this teaching methodology with mini projects. Students had better understanding of both programming concepts and design principles.