Experiences in teaching an object-oriented design and data structure course

Object-oriented design and data structures is one of the most important courses in computer science, computer system engineering or computer information systems. Usually this class is taught in the second year of a four-year curriculum. This class should be taught in such a way that students get interested in learning real programming with the object-oriented approach. Students also know the basics of data structures and applications of data structures. If this class is not taught properly, students will drop out. This course is the main foundation for a programmer or computer scientist. This paper describes the experience of the author in designing and teaching an object-oriented design and data structures course at Arizona State University, USA for the last eight semesters. This paper also describes the goal of the course, which is to provide an in-depth understanding of the object oriented design and fundamental data structures and motivate students to become a programmer.