WS10

Workshop

Tuesday 1500-1800

A pattern language for pedagogy

Helen Sharp

The Open University

Mary Lynn Manns

University of North Carolina

Phil McLaughlin

The Bloomsbury Software Company

Maximo Prieto

Universidad de La Plata

For two years, we have been conducting a project to collate and disseminate in a homogeneous, easily-accessible format, successful approaches and techniques for teaching and learning object technology. The purpose of the project has been warmly greeted by a wide audience at a variety of conferences, and we have been encouraged to continue. One of the major issues we encounter repeatedly is how best to format and categorise the ideas so that they can be easily understood and reused. We initially chose a pattern format, and have found this to be a useful tool for formalising ideas into a homogeneous structure. Currently we are formulating the patterns already collected into a pattern language, and have been grappling with questions of decomposition and categorisation.

Depending on the initial perspective of the learner or educator, there may be more than one appropriate structure, language, categorisation. For example, an educator may start from a position of having teaching materials which need to be re-used in a different setting, or they may start from a specific set of course goals. A learner of object technology may need help in understanding a specific concept, or in understanding the differences and similarities between two issues. An appropriate patter language (or appropriate pattern languages) should be able to support these (and other) aims.

This workshop explores alternatives and tests them out against example teaching and learning scenarios such as those given above, or scenarios which participants have encountered in their own experiences.

Pedagogical Patterns Website

Please click here to look at patterns we have collected.

Key topics

What should a pattern language to support the teaching and learning of object technology look like?

How should it be structured to promote accessibility and therefore use?

Are there a number of equally appropriate languages?

Helen Sharp was one of those responsible for designing and developing a masters level distance education course in object technology for software professionals. The course was first presented in November 1994 and takes on average over 400 students a year. She has chaired and tutored the presentation of the course for two years. Through the course she is investigating how experienced software developers are best able to be supported while they make the shift from the traditional to the object-oriented approach. Within the pedagogical patterns project she has co-led workshops at ECOOP 96, TOOLS USA 96, OOOPSLA 96 and Object Technology 97.

Mary Lynn Manns has been a member of the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville since 1981. In addition to teaching object technology courses to university students, she researches issues in education and retraining procedure-oriented students and industry developers in the object technology paradigm.

Phil McLaughlin undertook to introduce object-orientation into the teaching of Staffordshire University starting in 1990. In 1992 he designed and delivered the University's first course in object-oriented programming using Digitalk Smalltalk, and then expanded provision to courses in object-oriented analysis and design for various degree awards. During 1995 and 1996, he taught students at masters level in Hong Kong and provided consultancy to several UK companies. He recently joined The Bloomsbury Software Company.

Maximo Prieto is a faculty member at Lifia, Buenos Aires. He is involved in both education and industrial consultancy in object technology, and his work has been presented at a variety of conferences including ECOOP. OOPSLA, and TaTTOO.

Wednesday 8 April 1998