A Novice Framework for Learning Java in Higher Education

Learning programming in object-oriented way is common and Java programming language has been a popular object-oriented programming language for computer science (CS) related majors in higher education. However, learning object-oriented programming languages, such as java, is a challenge even for CS students. This paper presents a novice framework for learning java based on learning theories to avoid some pitfalls in java learning process and to improve undergraduate students' learning output of java language. With this framework, students will start with java package to organize their files, which is natural way for students to organize files on computer in daily life. Then new classes would be designed by students according to real life objects that students are familiar with. After that, objects will be created from a class in different packages. In this way, the framework helps students build their knowledge and skills step by step based on what they know. A case study was provided in this paper to demonstrate the application of this learning framework in a java course. Results showed that students in experimental group achieved better performance with new learning framework than students in control group did.