An innovative instructional method for teaching object-oriented modelling

Object-oriented modelling is considered to be complicated to teach and learn in introductory courses in computer science and software engineering. Animated program visualisation can be significantly used to support teaching objectoriented modelling for beginners. However, there is a lack in instructional methods that support such approach. This paper bridges the gap by introducing a new instructional method for teaching object-oriented modelling using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) with the help of a visualised 3D programming environment; Alice. The proposed instructional method is the first of its kind to introduce teaching software modelling with the support of animated visualisation tool. The basic approach is to extract the UML components from a 3D Alice world, then map these components to build the UML model that represents that world. This approach shows that animated program visualisation has the potential to help in teaching other aspects of software development process besides programming including modelling.