Preface Preface
Pedagogical Intention.
This is a workbook and not a textbook. There is very little explanatory text, as this is designed to be used within an active learning context, where students are accessing content through videos or reading other texts. These activities are designed to be relatively short and usable within a class period.
Learning to program takes intentional effort and practice. The exercises in this workbook are intentionally scaffolded by level within each topic area. This means that ’Starter’ exercises are highly scaffolded, ’Growth’ exercises are moderately scaffolded, and ’Stretch’ exercises are only lightly scaffolded. A student who is new to a particular topic should begin with Starter exercises and work their way up. A student who is refreshing on a topic may go straight to ’Stretch’ and only go backwards to ’Growth’ or ’Starter’ if they find they are struggling.
Expected Background.
This book is designed to accompany a second course in Java programming, and assumes that the introductory Java course was taught focusing on procedural aspects. The Java Basics chapter provides refresher exercises in case you haven’t programmed in Java recently. Many of the exercises in this workbook (especially in the Objects intro chapters) would NOT be suitable for students who had already taken an ’Objects-First’ introductory Java course.
Use of PythonTutor Visualizations.
Where appropriate, we have embedded links to identical code (or in some cases, solution code) that opens in the PythonTutor website. Despite its name, PythonTutor shows the execution of Java code (and code in many other languages). This is an excellent resource for learning, as it allows students to step through the code execution, seeing how objects and primitives are stored.
Development History.
The first edition of this workbook was created in Spring and Summer of 2024 at the University of Manitoba, by Dr. Celine Latulipe, PhD student Devon Blewett and undergraduate student Lara De Leon, with funding from the University of Manitoba Libraries Open Educational Resources board.
