Teaching object-oriented design with UML - a blended learning approach

With the rapid rate of innovation in object-technology, teaching, learning has become the most challenging issue. Software organizations have to systematically train and educate their developers in order to benefit from object-technology. However, tight project schedules and short development cycles often prohibit traditional class-room education. Therefore, e-learning approaches are becoming more and more popular, although these have a lack of social communication. This paper describes a blended learning approach, which mixes traditional classes and online courses. Although, both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses the synergy effects when used in combination clearly outweighs the isolated benefits of the approaches.