Content area
Full text
Abstract: Computer programming is one of the main subjects of computer science study programs at universities. Usually, students learn structural programming first, and later they start to learn object-oriented programming. At J. Selye University, computer science students learn structural programming in standard C programming language first, and later, in the second year of their studies, they move to object-oriented programming in C#. In this paper, we briefly overview some of the difficulties that may occur during the teaching of computer programming, especially during object-oriented programming courses. One of the problems that students can meet after a few weeks of participating in a programming course is a lack of enough motivation to develop an application. The solution to this problem can be in the development of computer games, which makes programming more enjoyable and can motivate novice programmers. In this paper, we also show, how the button component, the first component that students are familiar with in C#, can be used for instantiating an array of button objects in the C# programming language. Next, we give some ideas for using such an array of buttons to create computer games. Our goal was to find out simple computer games, that are easy and quick to develop but are interesting and motivating for novice programmers. In our opinions and experiences, the presented games can be used successfully to introduce object-oriented programming. Finally, we describe some of our observations and draw some conclusions.
Keywords: teaching and learning programming; object-oriented programming, creating computer games; C# programming language; button component.
INTRODUCTION
Object-oriented programming 1s one of the compulsory subjects of applied informatics and informatics teacher training study programs at J. Selye University. Undergraduate students learn computer programming mainly during the first two years of their university studies. First, they start with structural programming in standard C programming language. Next, they learn object-oriented programming in C# programming language. Except for the main programming subjects, students have additional courses in programming in Python, Perl, PHP, and JavaScript as well.
Structural programming that students learn during programming courses in the first year of their studies, uses functional decomposition of tasks, which develops procedural thinking [3]. In the second year, students start learning object-oriented programming, which makes use of students' reasoning skills and requires...