Motivating Students in Component-based Programming Courses

Component-based programming is predicted to become mainstream practice in software engineering in the next few years. Students need to get familiar with modern programming approaches such as this one, but including the topic into curricula is not a simple task. This paper presents our approach to teaching component-based programming. The goal of Component-Based Programming course was to practically explain the concept of program components and outline their benefits in software development. Students could try on their own how the initial design of software influenced stages of development when component-based approach was applied. To preserve students' engagement into the topic we utilised teaching by game development, an approach already successfully applied to Object-Oriented Programming course. We also describe the individual motivational factors we implemented in the course.