Adopting XP Practices for Teaching Object Oriented Programming

This paper reports on an Action Research project that investigated the effect of introducing a number of Extreme Programming (XP) practices as teaching techniques to introductory programming students. The focus of the study was on using the XP practices to assist students in an introductory programming subject develop object oriented programming skills, problem solving skills and teach them to become more self-sufficient in their learning. The research is concerned with applying several of the XP practices as a means of value-adding to current pedagogical approaches. The results from this first exploratory cycle have been mixed, but there have been enough positive results to feed forward into the next action research cycle.