A projects-oriented data communications course using Turbo Pascal units

The paper describes a Turbo Pascal unit oriented programming environment that allows inclusion of four lengthy programming projects into the undergraduate data communications course. The environment consists of a collection of compiled units and test programs which ultimately give the student a complete working solution and a test procedure for each unit. Using this environment, the student´s task is to develop and test procedures, in any order, for the problem solution, and then to build his or her own solution from correctly executing procedures. When the environment was first tried, 84% of the students completed each of the 500+ line programming projects in 2 weeks with an average project grade of 88. The advantages and lessons learned from using the unit oriented environment for large programming projects are discussed