AN E-LEARNING TOOL BASED ON MORPHISMS FOR TEACHING OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

摘要

When designing software, a correspondence between the particular situation and the model should be established. Morphism may be defined generally as a mapping from one element of a domain into another. It is more detailed and specific than the concept of abstraction. It is considered that use of morphisms can be useful for development of mental models and learning strategies to analyze and build adequate software models. This investigation extends a preliminary research work performed at ORT Uruguay University, during 2005. There, we verified that the use of morphisms helps to develop aforesaid models and strategies. We present the follow up of this investigation in this paper, defining components and elements needed for integrating information and communication technologies and the use of morphisms in an e-learning model. We also implemented a specific tool for promoting model related skills based on the explicit use of morphisms. The results of the experimentation showed that the use of this tool can be useful for analyzing and building adequate software models.