Development of online undergraduate object-oriented programming curriculum

The rapid spread and accessibility of the Internet since the beginning of this decade has baffled most technology forecasters. A telling comparison shows that it took 40 years for radio technology to reach 50 million users in the U.S., and it took TV 13 years, while it took only 4 years for the World Wide Web to reach the same number of users. While the growth in employment of all occupations in the U.S. information technology (IT) industry between 1996-2006 is projected at 88.25%, the growth of college/university IT faculty is only projected at 18.3% (http://www.ed.gov). These findings motivated us to propose the NSF-CCLI-EMD project to create a basis for several IT online degree programs in the US colleges and universities. A design and development of the online object-oriented programming (OOP) curriculum is a vital part of this project.