Object-Oriented Programming and Education

This post is one I started a long time ago, and am just getting to finishing. Hopefully, some of it still resonates. :-)

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is different than procedural programming, but it still has some similarities to education. In OOP, you write objects, not procedures. There may be procedural information within the object, but OOP is more about what something is and what it can do rather than telling it what to do. Wikipedia puts it much better: "The idea behind object-oriented programming is that a computer program may be seen as comprising a collection of individual units, or objects, that act on each other, as opposed to a traditional view in which a program may be seen as a collection of functions, or simply as a list of instructions to the computer. Each object is capable of receiving messages, processing data, and sending messages to other objects. Each object can be viewed as an independent little machine or actor with a distinct role or responsibility" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming).

OOP is similar to problem-based learning (PBL) or constructivism. The instructor or instructional designer still begins with the objectives (or desired outcomes), but then he/she develops what occurs in the classroom differently.

For problem-based learning, the instructor designs a real-world open-ended problem which students work collaboratively to solve. Sometimes, students are required to engage in inquiry to determine what information they will need to solve the problem, and there is built-in reflection on the problem-solving and collaboration that occurs during the activity. The teacher's role in PBL is to act as a facilitator, providing information to students as they ask for it. How does this relate to OOP? To my mind, elements of the "problem" in PBL are similar to the objects created by programmers. Each may (or may not) be used, and each can "act," if you will, more or less independently within the problem context.

Even more than PBL or constructivism, however, is the idea of learning objects. The idea of Learning Objects (LOs), and Learning Object Repositories (LORs) is one way the education community has attempted to realize the flexibility of using the object-oriented model for teaching. The biggest problem I see that we've run up against so far, however, is the educator's internal "need" to serialize the teaching/learning process. IDs are very caught up in the elements of teaching and learning that are valuable but that also tend toward the procedural. Directions, objectives, assessments, etc., are all very important, but there is an implied "order" to these things that makes construction of LOs that much more difficult.

Is it worth the struggle? Yes. But there is more work to do before we can really say we've "gotten" it.