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A BRIDGING, SCAFFOLDING OR SKELETAL INITIAL OOSD LEARNING OBJECT

A BRIDGING, SCAFFOLDING OR SKELETAL INITIAL OOSD LEARNING OBJECT. Fintan Culwin, Phil Campbell and Kemi Adeboye. Fintan@lsbu.ac.uk ; campbep@lsbu.ac.uk ; adeboyk@lsbu.ac.uk London South Bank University. Overview. Why Learning Objects? Design Considerations. Implementation.

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A BRIDGING, SCAFFOLDING OR SKELETAL INITIAL OOSD LEARNING OBJECT

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  1. A BRIDGING, SCAFFOLDING OR SKELETAL INITIAL OOSD LEARNING OBJECT Fintan Culwin, Phil Campbell and Kemi Adeboye. Fintan@lsbu.ac.uk; campbep@lsbu.ac.uk; adeboyk@lsbu.ac.uk London South Bank University.

  2. Overview • Why Learning Objects? • Design Considerations. • Implementation. • Evaluation. • Result. • Conclusion.

  3. Why Learning Objects? • Complexity of Concepts • Disaffection/Non-Engagement with subject • Retention • Need to address the above

  4. Design Considerations (1) • Problem of coding: Bane of a SD student’s life. • To Bridge or to Scaffold- That is the question • The tool should offer a • Bridge: to give students a safe route over initial difficulty of creating classes, and provide a • Scaffold: to allow students to complete tasks that would otherwise be almost impossible for them at this initial stage without assistance, but not be a • Skeleton: without which the student is unable to stand on their own two feet.

  5. Design Considerations (2) • Tool should also • Be expressive. • Promote good practise. • Have suitable granularity. • Have good usability.

  6. Implementation • The Java Class Factory: • Form. • Wizard.

  7. The Java Class Factory Note the number of decisions that have to be made in order to complete the form. These descisions would have to be made whilst deciding which form of words to use and where to put the semi-colons as well as remembering that this is not the same as This, and some methods need to include void but some need to include int, apart from those that do not have either because they are constructors and then although the UML goes thingy int the Java goes int thingy (or is it the other way around?) and sometimes you use {} but at other times it is () and main() is static as well as having []s in it . . . . . . .

  8. The Java Class Factory • Main interactive part used to define the class. • The form bridges many of the problems faced by students new to SD (e.g Java syntax, rules, etc.) • It offers the opportunity to focus on the essential decisions. At least 12 of these were identified in this case. (e.g. Class/package name, atrributes, methods, visibility, primitive types etc.)

  9. The Java Class Factory Outputs

  10. The Java Class Wizard Managing the complexityinherent in the JCF interface in this waymake it less intimidating?

  11. Evaluation (1) • Formal evaluation of two versions of the interface conducted in a structured support environment, under exam conditions, with a volunteer cohort of students. • Investigation conducted during assessment gap period of semesters 1 and 2 of the 2003/4 session. • Volunteer group consisted of 100 students; all first year and had just completed their first SD unit. • Group split into 3 for Form (factory), Wizard and Template. (The template was declarations and partial demonstration without the factory/wizard interface.)

  12. Evaluation (2) • Duration: approx. 2 hour session • Pre-activity sheets 15mins. • Questionnaire, 6questions, rate scale 1-5, • “I like programming, I can build a simple Java class, demonstration, I can explain what an object is, I can explain what a constructor does, am looking forward to learning more about SD, • Spot deliberate errors in a simple class with 2 attributes • Main Activity • Paper description of a pair of classes. • Work on versions of interface to build classes • collected after 1 hour. • Post activity sheet 15mins. • Same pre-activity questionnaire but different class given to spot deliberate errors. • De-briefing 20mins.

  13. Predictions • Predictions: • No effect upon competence? • Negative attitude effect from template. • Postive attitude effect from factory & wizard (Hawthorne?). • Larger effect for the wizard.

  14. Results: • Measurable differences in attitude and competence between both versions were ambiguous. • Results were ambiguous as students believed that they were attending an examination revision session. • Some students in the template group were so lost and distressed that assistance had to be given. • Group expressed opinion that provision of tool during the course of the semester while studying the unit, would have been highly beneficial. • Similar opinion expressed by second and final year students.

  15. Conclusion & Further Work • From students’ expressed attitude they believe that the Learning object would be useful. • Integrate the Learning Object into this year’s presentation. • Continue to develop expressive SD LO (LoopLO &Poople). • URL FOR JCF: http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~fintan/jcf/jcfw.html

  16. Loop Learning Object • These are a collection of simple learning objects that are first intended to assist with the learning of C style for loop constructs. Secondly they are inteneted to demonstrate the concept of 'situatedness' (sic) (This work is still ongoing and only the simplest configuration of the object is shown.)

  17. LoopLO Poople LO

  18. http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~fintan/jcf/jcfw.html URL FOR JCF: ANY QUESTIONS?

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