Teaching Ada: a comparison of two approaches

Abstract : This report describes an experimental comparison of two approaches to teaching the Ada language. The goal was to discover an effective way to teach students the use of the language as a vehicle to apply information hiding and data abstraction to software development. The fifty-four participants in the study were enrolled in an advanced undergraduate Ada class at the Univ. of MD. Baseline data was gathered on every student, including programming aptitude scores. The class was then randomly divided into two sections. One section was taught the language features first, approximately in the order that they are presented in the language manual, and then shown how packages can be used to encapsulate objects, resources, and types when a system is first designed. The other section was taught these principles of encapsulation first by learning to use the Ada package to express designs before the lower-level language features were presented. The same set of lectures was eventually presented to both sections. Although it was initially hypothesized that the section which learned design first would ultimately produce more modifiable programs, the lack of complete, executable examples during the entire first half of the course appeared to hamper a complete understanding of the concepts. Ultimately, the high variability among the students masked any large differences between the sections.