Open University Launches the World's Largest Computing Course; New Course to Teach ObjectShare's Smalltalk to Thousands of Students Across the World

Business Wire, June 2, 1998

FARNHAM, United Kingdom--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 2, 1998--The world's largest computing course was launched Tuesday by The Open University.

The new course entitled, Computing: an Object Oriented Approach, will for thousands of students, redefine computing by introducing computing concepts through object technology. The course has been designed for Internet-centric study and employs full multimedia: the Web, computer conferencing, e-mail, paper texts, interactive CD-ROM, TV, and a new programming system developed using the Smalltalk development environment, VisualWorks, from ObjectShare Inc. (Nasdaq:OBJS).

To celebrate its introduction, the new flagship computing course on object technology and network computing is being launched this week at a reception on June 4th. The course uses a specialized version of ObjectShare's Smalltalk-based development environment, VisualWorks, to teach object-oriented concepts. It utilizes Smalltalk in an interactive software learning environment that gradually exposes more complexity and power as the students progress.

Using a notebook metaphor, it allows students to write and evaluate code as well as design and manipulate graphical user interfaces. The course has already over 5,000 students signed up for the initial presentation.

Dr. Mark Woodman, course director for this Open University course said: "We selected Smalltalk to teach object-orientation for several key reasons. First, it has a simple syntax, which will enable students to start writing code early on in the course. Second, it is a pure OO language and therefore students do not have to figure out if a construct in the language is an object or not."

The object approach to software is being used to introduce both the programming and the analysis.

In addition to programming, the new course teaches analytical skills enabling students to look at a real problem and decide what software components would be required to produce a computer-based solution. The new course also explores some of the choices that have to be made in software development, including ethical and social ones, and explicitly teaches Internet-based teamwork.

"Using a totally object-oriented environment such as VisualWorks, the Open University has been able to create a teaching environment that demonstrates the simplicity yet richness of the Smalltalk language, making it the ideal vehicle for introducing object-oriented concepts," commented Russell Prince-Wright, vice president of European Operations for ObjectShare.

"We are excited by the prospect of the Open University reaching so many new people and introducing them to objects with Smalltalk and our products."

The Open University

The Open University is Britain's largest and most innovative educational and training organisation. It leads the world in the large-scale application of technology to learning. There are more than 200,000 people currently studying with the Open University. Of these 125,000 are taking undergraduate level courses while another 39,000 are registered for postgraduate degrees. There are professional development programs in management, education, health and social welfare, manufacturing and computer applications.

In addition the University offers self-contained study packs, many of which are used by more than one person. For more information regarding Open University's program call Gary Spink in the United Kingdom at 44-1908-653-343 or by e-mail at g.r.spink@open.ac.uk.

About ObjectShare

Founded in 1983, ObjectShare is the leader in object-oriented solutions for network computing. With complete support for industry standards using Smalltalk or Java, the company offers its development environments, and frameworks, along with consulting, education and support services worldwide.

With headquarters in Irvine, the company also maintains offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. For more information about ObjectShare, call 800/759-7272 or 949/833-1122. ObjectShare's World Wide Web address (URL) is http://www.objectshare.com.

About VisualWorks

VisualWorks is a powerful object-oriented application development environment for building state-of-the-art network computing applications that are truly portable across Windows, Macintosh and most UNIX platforms. VisualWorks developers benefit from an integrated development environment, enhanced application delivery, and incorporation of a powerful suite of development tools, including the ObjectLens for bridging between relational databases and objects, GUI interface painter and the proven ANSI compliant VisualWorks Smalltalk language. VisualWorks applications are easy to maintain, enable rapid development and allow dynamic response to changes in your business.

The VisualWorks product suite includes add-ons which enable deployment to the Web with VisualWave, development of n-tier distributed applications with Distributed Smalltalk, enhanced development tools with Advanced Tools, interface to external code with DLL&C Connect, creation and access of COM components with COM Connect and flexible access to relational databases from Oracle or Sybase with Database Connect. -0-