Treffer: Teaching OOT Using a Framework and Both Direct and Net-based Tutoring 1

We report on experience from teaching OO project courses to undergraduate students. Before they can successfully tackle projects they have to climb a rather steep qualification ladder: pick up a working knowledge of some OO language, learn and practice OOA and OOD, and get used to advanced ideas like patterns and frameworks. In order to relieve this heavy burden somewhat, we provide an object-oriented application framework as a common base for the projects. That way, the students are given an architecture, which they have to adapt to their specific task instead of doing all the design on their own. We also believe that this policy closely resembles the way beginners are integrated into on-going projects in practice. We briefly describe the Java framework we use and then concentrate on the organizational issues involved.