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The JavaFest: a collaborative learning technique for Java programming courses

Published: 09 September 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Learning to create well-designed and robust Java programs requires, besides a good understanding of the language, a significant amount of practice. In this paper we present the JavaFest, a collaborative learning technique for teaching Java to beginning programmers. A JavaFest is a group exercise that instructors can add to their repertoire of teaching techniques. It provides an opportunity for students to practice programming in a motivating but non-threatening environment, and to learn from the experience of their peers. Moreover, a JavaFest allows the instructor to gain insight into the current standing of the students in her class.
We describe the concept of a JavaFest and present three case studies in the form of three concrete JavaFests we developed and evaluated in our own object-oriented programming course. The general idea of a JavaFest, and the three specific examples we describe and evaluate, can easily be adopted to enhance any Java programming course.

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  • (2021)Software Testing Education: A Systematic Literature ReviewVFAST Transactions on Software Engineering10.21015/vtse.v9i4.9539:4(109-125)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2021
  • (2018)Teaching Cyber Security Using Competitive Software Obfuscation and Reverse Engineering ActivitiesProceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3159450.3159489(179-184)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2018
  • (2018)Transformative learning in designing algorithms for reporting information systemsEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-018-9687-523:4(1699-1717)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2018
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    PPPJ '08: Proceedings of the 6th international symposium on Principles and practice of programming in Java
    September 2008
    198 pages
    ISBN:9781605582238
    DOI:10.1145/1411732
    • Conference Chairs:
    • Luis Veiga,
    • Vasco Amaral
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 09 September 2008

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    View all
    • (2021)Software Testing Education: A Systematic Literature ReviewVFAST Transactions on Software Engineering10.21015/vtse.v9i4.9539:4(109-125)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2021
    • (2018)Teaching Cyber Security Using Competitive Software Obfuscation and Reverse Engineering ActivitiesProceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3159450.3159489(179-184)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2018
    • (2018)Transformative learning in designing algorithms for reporting information systemsEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-018-9687-523:4(1699-1717)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2018
    • (2017)An Automated System for Interactively Learning Software TestingProceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3059009.3059022(98-103)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2017
    • (2015)Combining mastery learning with project-based learning in a first programming courseProceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 210.5555/2819009.2819059(315-318)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
    • (2015)Combining Mastery Learning with Project-Based Learning in a First Programming Course: An Experience Report2015 IEEE/ACM 37th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE.2015.163(315-318)Online publication date: May-2015
    • (2012)Using peer review to teach software testingProceedings of the ninth annual international conference on International computing education research10.1145/2361276.2361295(93-98)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2012
    • (2012)Running students' software tests against each others' codeProceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/2157136.2157202(221-226)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2012
    • (2010)Mutation analysis vs. code coverage in automated assessment of students' testing skillsProceedings of the ACM international conference companion on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications companion10.1145/1869542.1869567(153-160)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2010

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