Teaching Design by Teaching Reusability

Initial teaching of programming typically stresses language and program implementation issues, rather than design. We suggest a focus on reusability offers a way to introduce design at an early stage. Our approach is based on a general model for understanding reusability. It allows students to understand some basic design issues that assist programming language learning and program implementation, by establishing principles at a higher level. This paper outlines our model, describes how we use it to structure our teaching, and explains how it supports early teaching and learning of design. Publishing Information This paper appeared at the Teaching and Learning Object Design in the First Academic Year Workshop, OOPSLA’96