Coupling on-line game implementation and problem solving: A viable approach

One of the challenges in an introductory programming and problem solving course is developing a well defined programming problem. The problem base must be complicated enough to illustrate stepwise refinement and other programming constructs, while still being able to be completed in one or two weeks during a semester. An approach, which has been used successfully in both the introduction to problem solving and the object-oriented programming courses, has been to have the students design and implement a solution to one of the many online games (e.g., zone.msn.com). It has been our experience that these online games provide a variety of challenging problems, meet many of the hourly coverage goals IEEE-CS/ACM CC2001 [1] curriculum guidelines for both imperative-first and object-first approaches, and motivate and hold the student's attention.