CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Eighth Workshop on Pedagogies and Tools for the Teaching and Learning of Object Oriented Concepts Monday, June 14, 2004		ECOOP web site Overview Program (including links to accepted papers) Pictures from the workshop Suggested Topics Intended Audience Workshop Organization Requirements for Attendance Important Dates About the Organisers For More Information

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Eighth Workshop on Pedagogies and Tools for the Teaching and Learning of Object Oriented Concepts

Monday, June 14, 2004

Overview
Program (including links to accepted papers)
Pictures from the workshop
Suggested Topics
Intended Audience
Workshop Organization
Requirements for Attendance
Important Dates
About the Organisers
For More Information

Overview

Successfully applying object-oriented techniques requires a thorough understanding of basic object-oriented concepts. However, teaching and learning these concepts have proven to be very difficult in the past.

Using traditional programming languages, concepts could be introduced step by step. Abstract and advanced concepts, like for example modules and abstract data types could be handled as an afterthought. In the object-oriented paradigm, the basic concepts are tightly interrelated and cannot easily be taught and learned in isolation, making these tasks much more challenging.

Switching to object-oriented development is not just a matter of programming languages. Focusing on the notational details of a certain language prevents students from grasping the “big picture”. Many traditional examples are furthermore not very suitable for the teaching and learning of object-oriented concepts. Many popular examples (like for example 'Hello World') actually contradict the rules, guidelines and styles we want to instil in our students.

Educators must therefore be very careful when selecting/developing examples and metaphors. Rules and misconceptions that students develop based on doubtful examples will stand in the way of teachers and learners as well.

This is the eighth in a series of workshops on issues in object-oriented teaching and learning. Previous workshops were held at OOPSLA'97, ECOOP'98, OOPSLA'99, ECOOP'00, OOPSLA'01, ECOOP'02 and ECOOP'03.

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Intended Audience

This workshop will bring together educators, researchers, and practitioners from academia and industry to share and discuss experiences, ideas and resources to support the teaching and learning of object-orientation. We also want to encourage trainees or students to report experiences from the learners' point of view.

People from other areas than computer science or educational research in general are also welcome, but they should clearly state how their work can be applied to the learning and teaching of object technology.

A maximum of 25 participants will be selected on the basis of the submitted material. The number of participants per accepted submission is limited to 2.

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Workshop Organization

Attendance to the workshop is limited. Participation will be by invitation only, based on the organizing committee's evaluation of a position paper. The submission should be accompanied by the author(s)' main message and a desired topic for working group discussions.

Pre-Workshop Activities

All contributions will be made available on the workshop home page before the workshop. Attendees will discuss desired topics for working groups. The most interesting and popular topics (maximum 5) will be further discussed in working groups at the workshop.

Workshop Activities

During the morning sessions of the workshop each participant will get a minute or two to very briefly introduce herself/himself and convey her/his main message(s) (maximum 2 minutes each). The rest of the morning will be spent with 4-6 (full) presentations of about 20-30 minutes each, selected based on the organizing committee's evaluation of submissions.

All afternoon will be dedicated to working group sessions. The results from the working groups will be summarised and discussed during the last hour of the workshop (wrap-up session).

Post-Workshop Activities

The co-organisers will prepare a workshop summary to be published in the ECOOP'04 Workshop Reader. Further results will be made available electronically on the workshop homepage.

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Requirements for Attendance

Attendance to the workshop is limited. To be invited to the workshop, prospective attendees are required to submit a position paper on a topic relevant to the workshop. All submitted contributions will be formally reviewed by the workshop co- organisers for clarity, originality, relevance, and the potential to fuel interesting discussions. The number of participants per accepted submission is limited to 2.

Position papers should not exceed 8 pages in length.

All contributions should be sent electronically to Jürgen Börstler (jubo@cs.umu.se) no later than April 5. We would prefer PDF format, but will also accept Postscript, Word, or HTML files.

Each submission should be accompanied by (1) a short biography of the author(s); (2) the author(s)' main message/position; and (3) a desired topic for working group discussions.

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Important Dates

Position paper due:
Notification of acceptance:
Deadline for early registration:
Workshop:

April 5, 2004
April 26, 2004
May 7, 2004
June 14, 2004

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About the Organisers

Jürgen Börstler (jubo@cs.umu.se) is an associate professor and director of studies in computing science at Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. His main research interests are in the areas object-oriented software development, requirements management, software quality assurance, and educational issues in computer science. He is the co-founder of this workshops series and co-organiser of all workshops in this series.

Isabel Michiels (Isabel.Michiels@vub.ac.be) is a research and teaching assistant at the Programming Technology Lab of Vrije University, Brussels, Belgium. In 1999, she obtained the degree of Master of Science in Object-Oriented Software Engineering Technologies (EMOOSE). Her master thesis, and consequently also her beginning research, dealt with teaching object technology by means of intelligent environments. Her current research interests for her PhD are in the domain of reengineering and automated code quality inspection techniques, based on her 'licentiate' thesis. She co-organised workshops in this series at ECOOP'00, OOPSLA'01, ECOOP'02 and ECOOP'03.

Annita Fjuk (annita.fjuk@intermedia.uio.no) (InterMedia, University of Oslo/Telenor Research & Development) is the leader of project COOL (Comprehensive Object-Oriented Learning). Since 1990, Fjuk has lead several national and international projects on use of information and communication technologies in learning and teaching. Her research specialities include analysis and design of ICT- mediated learning environments addressed and operationalised with use of socio-cultural theories. She has a number of publications related to this area.

Jens Kaasbøll (Jens.Kaasboll@ifi.uio.no) is professor and head of department at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway. In addition to a long teaching experience, he conducted an early experiment with the modelling approach to introductory teaching, demonstrating its feasibility. He has also published research papers in the area of didactics of informatics, and he runs a master level course on this topic.

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For More Information

More information on the workshop series and related events can be found at the workshop series' home page.

Useful Resources

ACM SIGCSE Education Links
IEEE Education Society
Curriculum 2001
Home page of the COOL project
Pedagogical patterns
- "Official" project home page
- Joe Bergin's patterns page(s)

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