Title: The quest for excellence in designing a multi-paradigm programming environment for novices

Authors: Stelios Xinogalos

Addresses: Department of Technology Management, University of Macedonia, Loggou-Tourpali, 59200 Naousa, Greece

Abstract: In this paper we present the programming environments Karel and objectKarel that support the procedural and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigms. Karel and objectKarel share the same GUI and functionalities, and thus they constitute a multi-paradigm environment. The design of the environment was based on the extended research carried out the last decades regarding the teaching of programming to novices and is the main focus of the paper. The potential uses of the environments for teaching programming concepts and techniques to various audiences and different learning contexts, as well as experiences of using them so far, are also presented.

Keywords: programming environments; programming paradigms; procedural programming; OOP; object-oriented programming; educational software; programming novices; teaching programming; programming education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTCS.2009.026295

International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies, 2009 Vol.2 No.1, pp.1 - 16

Published online: 05 Jun 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article