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Session 3232

An Internet Course in Software Development with C++ for Engineering Students

Yosef Gavriel, Robert Broadwater Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Virginia Tech

Abstract

This paper discuss an experimental course in software development in C++ for graduate and undergraduate students in engineering, that was completely delivered through the Internet during the 1997-1998 time period. The course assumed no previous knowledge or background in C or C++ programming. Topics covered included: fundamental types in C++, basic operations, control structures, programming style and software craftmanship, functions, classes, constructors and destructors, object oriented analysis, object oriented design, operator overloading, inheritance, polymorphism memory management exception handling, function and class templates, and template libraries.

I. Introduction

At the time the course was developed, on-campus servers were having problems handling the large number of students enrolled in some courses that made extensive use of the Internet. This course was to be offered to both on-campus and off-campus students. To avoid slow server response, the course was designed so that the majority of the materials to be used by the students (i.e., the lectures) could be downloaded and utilized on the student’s machines.

II. Course management

The students were able to use the Internet to ask questions and participate in discussion groups, download course files, submit homework, and take tests. Course material was available in a web site for viewing and download. The Internet interactions included chat rooms, virtual office hours, and a Frequently Asked Questions bulletin board. Student were able to review assignments, work through hypertext lectures relating to the reading assignments, review material via interactive questions, do homework, and have the capability to copy code directly from lectures and homework to a Windows based C++ compiler. Programming examples were motivated from small and simple circuits from introductory courses in electricity.

III. Course materials

The lectures were written in a hypertext language that provided jumps and popup windows. The popup windows were extremely useful for explaining code. For instance, consider the following line of code which is defined at global scope in a file:

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Gavriel, Y., & Broadwater, R. (2000, June), An Internet Course In Software Development With C++ For Engineering Students Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8499