Apprenticeship in Undergraduate Java Programming

Even the best textbooks for Java programming have one substantial deficiency. They use small, isolated programming examples and throw-away lab exercises that do almost nothing to convey the situated application of object-oriented language constructs. An alternative approach is to embed Java programming assignments as encapsulated modules in an extensible application framework built up across semesters and several courses, with instructors serving as lead analysts and architects. Taking its cues from professional software engineering practices, as well as the educational practices of situated learning, cognitive apprenticeships and microworlds, this approach has the fundamental goal of embedding the introduction to Java programming in a realistic software and social environment from which students can learn via reading, observation, incremental exploration, interaction and deployment of their creations, in addition to the writing and testing of code. Students get a feeling for the categories of work and types of problems they will encounter in supporting and extending professional software frameworks created initially by others. They learn to apply objectoriented constructs by the end of a semester, and they may perform more sophisticated engineering on their software framework in subsequent courses. This paper reports the successful results and pitfalls of applying this approach.