About the course

Welcome to the University of Helsinki’s massive open online course (MOOC) on programming! This is an updated version of our popular course Object-Oriented Programming with Java.

Please note, that this is a legacy course. It is no longer possible to gain ECTS credits for completing the course. The course content is also no longer updated or maintained. You can find our current Python course here

During this course, you will learn the basics of computer programming, along with algorithms and object-oriented programming through the Java programming language. The course includes comprehensive materials and plenty of programming exercises - all of which are tested using our automatic testing service Test My Code.

Anyone can join - no previous programming knowledge is required.

Unlike many programming courses found online, ours is completely unabridged; the course’s scope and material are identical to our CS1 Introduction to Programming and Advanced Programming courses.

We use industry-grade tooling from day one. As such, the course is about programming in a real integrated development environment (IDE) instead of a browser or an educational IDE.

The course does not require separate registration. You can simply dive into the first part of the course found over here.

Course Contents

The course is split up into two individual courses: Java Programming I and Java Programming II. Each course consists of seven parts, each with its own exercise set. Completing a single part takes approximately 5-20 hours, and we recommend reserving at least 10 hours per part, depending on prior skills with computers.

Credits and certificate

No more exams will be held on this course. If you wish to complete Introduction to Programming and the Advanced Course in Programming for credits, see Python Programming MOOC.

You can get a certificate for each course (Java Programming I & Java Programming II separately) at here: https://www.mooc.fi/en/profile/completions.