BlueJ-UML: Learning Object-Oriented Programming Paradigm using Interactive Programming Environment

Most of the students coming from various different backgrounds find software programming a difficult subject to learn and master, especially in learning the concept of object-oriented programming. Because they must be able to model physical beings into virtualized objects and define complex object relationships in their designs for object interactions in a very abstract fashion that is not easily understood. This study is an attempt to introduce a unique interactive learning platform to students learning Java programming, which was designed with a set of object-oriented programming pedagogical considerations in mind. This study further extends and enhances with model-driven software development technique, such that to supporting unified modelling language (UML) class diagrams and code fragments generation in order to ease the learning needs of students, a unique way to learn fundamental programming concepts. This paper introduces a new online interactive platform and environment called BlueJ-UML, which is to help students to learn and practice object-oriented programming in class. It also evaluates the success outcome of the proposed new learning method through a Technology Acceptance Model Framework, and that followed by a comprehensive statistical analysis to assess improved academic performance of the students. The result was encouraging: student programming capability had been significantly elevated and was positively correlated to their overall perception and adoption of this new technique introduced in the class.