Eclipse University Outreach: Eclipse IDE for Education

The Eclipse IDE for Education is a version of Eclipse streamlined specifically for use by post-secondary (undergraduate university and college) students. The environment provides support for programming languages that are commonly used in university courses, including Java, Scheme, and Prolog.

Students arriving at university have many new things to contend with. They are very often living away from their parents for the first time, and are new to the post-secondary environment. They must contend with a new instruction style, new ideas, programming languages, and concepts. They must also contend with new tools and development environments. We can't help students make healthy meals for themselves, but we can help by providing a development environment that is streamlined specifically for their needs.

A common criticism of Eclipse-based IDEs is that the initial learning curve is steep. Indeed, if you take an objective look just at the process of creating a new Java class, it can be daunting for a first-time user. First, they must create a new Java Project. In that Java project, they can create a Java class. But it needs a package, and the package needs to be defined in a "sources" folder. The wizards present options that can seem overwhelming. What JRE will be used? What projects are referenced? Where in the file system should the project be created? Mercifully, the default values tend to be good choices and—ultimately—the flexibility is good for the seasoned developer. But we think we can do better for the first time user.

Ultimately, with this project, we intend to explore different paradigms for interaction between the developer and the IDE. More immediately, we are focused on providing an environment with reduced clutter that allows students to focus on their immediate requirement of getting classroom work done. In essence, the current work provides a streamlined environment featuring stripped down versions of wizards for creating common elements. We anticipate that students will use this environment in their first months of learning and then progress to a more complete Eclipse configuration.

Current State

Our efforts around IDE4EDU can best be described as "exploratory" at this point. We have created a component as part of the Eclipse SOC project but have initiated the process of growing that component into its own project. Please review the project proposal at http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/ide4edu.

The current implementation provides a streamlined Java development environment which provides reduced complexity by providing new wizards that hide many of the options that are unnecessary for the first time user. We have also built the rudiments of support for the Scheme language.

Ultimately, in order to produce an environment that is suitable for use by students, we need feedback from students and from faculty. This is one of the driving forces behind the student events that we've been organising: through networking directly with students, we hope to learn how we can improve the Eclipse experience.

Additional information, including downloads, is available on the Eclipse Wiki.

We invite you to get involved with the project through our newsgroup.