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Old dogs, new tricks

Published:15 March 1995Publication History
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Abstract

The object oriented paradigm is sweeping the world of computer science and many educators advocate an object oriented programming language for CS1. At our school a large proportion of our student body consists of non-traditional students who are either starting college later, changing fields, or brushing up on their skills. We wanted to determine if older, non-traditional students were interested in OOP, and if interested, could they adequately compete with the younger students. We instituted a pilot program to teach C++ in a traditional academic style and collected data for a year for this study. We show that our older students in every age bracket did as well as, and in most cases much better than, those students in the 25 and under group. Based on the data collected, we feel the pilot program was a complete success.

References

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  1. Old dogs, new tricks

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
        ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 27, Issue 1
        March 1995
        402 pages
        ISSN:0097-8418
        DOI:10.1145/199691
        Issue’s Table of Contents
        • cover image ACM Conferences
          SIGCSE '95: Proceedings of the twenty-sixth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
          March 1995
          436 pages
          ISBN:089791693X
          DOI:10.1145/199688
          • Chairman:
          • Cary Laxer,
          • Editors:
          • Curt M. White,
          • James E. Miller,
          • Judy Gersting

        Copyright © 1995 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 15 March 1995

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