[Bluej-discuss] What is a good pace for the book?

[Michael Kölling]

Hi Barry,

I think your impression is right: one chapter a week is too fast for  
some of the chapters. For some chapters, you will need more time.

The book material overall fills somewhere between one and two  
semesters. The two ways in which the book can be used is for one  
semester (and leaving out some chapters) or for two semesters (and  
filling in some additional material).

The exact pace depends a lot on the context: what kind of institution  
your teaching at, age of your students, prior experience, and so on.  
I have tought with the book mostly in a first semester introductory  
programming course at a university, where no prior programming  
knowledge is assumed.

Here is what I usually do:

Chapter 1 can be done in one week.

Chapter two may need a bit more time - a week and a half sounds about  
right.

Three can be covered in a week.

Chapter four is very long and full, and you should plan at least two  
weeks for it.

Chapter 5 can be stretched (it's about library classes). You could  
cover the minimum in a week, but you could easily spend another week  
on that area if you like. There are manu areas than could be explored.

Chapter 6 is also flexible. It's about testing. You can cover it  
briefly in a week; you could cover it much better in two (with better  
practice in actually writing more tests). This is also a candidate  
for leaving out altogether.

I cover Chapter 7 usually in a week in lectures, but then use the  
Zuul project as an assignment over the following three or four weeks  
(which means that we continue discussing the relevant topics in the  
tutorial sessions).

Inheritance is important (chapters 8, 9, 10). I'd plan about four to  
five weeks for the three chapters.

The remaining chapters open up new areas, and are largely  
independent. They can be covered as an introduction in a week each,  
or in much more depth if desired. Each of them can be left out or  
extended.

Which ones to leave out or to concentrate on is a matter of  
preference. Some people really want to emphasise testing, and spend  
two full weeks on chapter 6. Some people don't do it in the first  
semester at all.

GUIs (chapter 11) may be left out, or you could spend three weeks on  
it. It's a rich area. If your students are good (or you want to offer  
something to the good ones in your class) you can do the GUI chapter  
in a week, and the good ones will be able to go on their own from there.

Chapters 13 and 14 seem to be the ones most frequently left out when  
time is short.

The exercises: I think that's hard to answer in general. We did not  
expect all of them to be dome in any one course. We also expected  
that teachers may add more exercises if they observe problems in an  
area.

Especially for standard material (if statements, loops) we did not  
put as many exercises into the book as I think you should do. But  
coming up with these exercises is trivial. You may need to add a few  
of your own. We put some into the book to show where they should go,  
but we do not claim to provide everything you should be doing.

Exercises in some other areas (especially OO concepts and code  
quality aspects and so on) are much harder to think up, and we have  
carefully put in enough exercises (I think).

Other people may use the book differently, so this is just my version.

Regards,

Michael

On 2 Feb 2006, at 9:31, Barry Brown wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am using the Objects First with BlueJ book for my Introduction to
> Java class. I have no prior experience with the book. So far, the
> response from the students has been positive.
>
> What is a good pace to progress through the book? I have been
> operating under the assumption that one week per chapter is the
> desired pace, but we are on Chapter 2 and I don't think I can cover
> the material in one week AND have the students do about 40 of the 73
> the exercises. I now think that Chapter 2 will take roughly 1 1/2
> weeks to do, making me concerned that other chapters will also take
> more than a week each.
>
> There are about 13 usable weeks in the semester. We won't be able to
> do all the chapters. Which ones can I safely omit? Does there exist
> suggested curriculums for terms of various lengths?
>
> I don't have a good feel yet for how long it takes the students to do
> the exercises. Based on your experiences, how many problems should I
> be assigning?
>
> Sorry for all the questions. Any tips you can provide would be much
> appreciated.
>
> Barry
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