On Teaching Java and Object Oriented Programming by Using Children Board Games

Teaching a new object oriented programming (OOP) language nowadays is a challenging task. Many different approaches were proposed in the last years. But which one helps to achieve the optimal learning results? In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle wrote: “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”. He already knew that the best way to learn something is to do it. Experience has confirmed the effectiveness of this approach, including in the field of programming. When learning a new programming language, it is extremely important to apply it directly to a specific task. Such a task could be, for example, the development of a well-known children's board game such as Nanu, Zicke Zacke etc. This is exactly the task we set our students as part of the “Object Oriented Programming with Java” module. In this paper we want to report the experiences we have made with this approach and make suggestions for the future.