Improving Students’ Engagement and Learning Outcomes in a Primer Course on Object Oriented Programming in Java.

The course ‘Software design in Java’ is a 4 ects course on object-oriented programming in the first bachelor year of the bachelor/master in Engineering Technology, jointly organized by Hasselt University and KU Leuven (Belgium). The course used to be perceived as (very) difficult, partly because this first bachelor year is part of the general phase of three semesters, after which students choose their major. Of the seven options only two are geared towards electronics and/or computer science, implying that many students in the course have little affinity with programming. This paper discusses seven didactic methods that have been applied in different forms in the course in an attempt to increase student engagement in the short term and learning outcomes at the end of the semester. The methods cover a variety of techniques: from different forms of feedback and coaching, over blended offerings with on-campus-first in mind, up till nudges in evaluation to encourage excellence. The paper discusses evolutions and success stories as well as measures with presumably little impact. While each of the measures in its own might have little statistical evidence, the accumulated effect shows a substantial increase in students succeeding the course—without lowering the requirements—.