How to speed up the learning process in programming is always a myth. Many educators try different methods for this but there always have been a margin of error in that. Here at CIIT now a days Im trying to push a class which include some very hardworking guys to learn the object oriented concepts. The best way which I think is to make them learn java. But learning java in a very start is always a difficult thing. One half of the semester is spent in usual structured programming and the other half now Im starting to make them learn the core classes and OOP concepts. My way which we adopted after long experience is that, try to make them use the latest equipment like latest releases of netbeans or eclips and speed up the process of writing code. Delivering lectures is not enough for the students they can only learn with speed if they write maximum code in short time.
I have a personal experience that while delivering the lectures students tend to understand the code and the concepts being delivered in the class but when they later on try to implement the coding problems they fall into the traps of syntax first and with the more and more hands on experience they become less vulnerable to casual coding errors. Using better IDE helps them to quickly overcome the problems caused by the lack of good management of IDE. Normally we conduct the interviews from the students so that we could enhance their learning ability towards more complex coding problems and they also confirm that by using the latest IDE helps them to speed up the learning process. The use of tutorials written in java helps the students to learn what the professional do in their field.