After a long period with few changes, recent versions of Java have introduced many new features to the language. Record classes, sealed classes, pattern-matching, and switch expressions: all are now present in the language. Many Java educators, being busy with teaching (especially during the pandemic), will not have had time to learn and understand all the new features that have been added. Furthermore, it may not be immediately obvious which – if any – of the new features are worth inserting into existing Java courses.

This workshop will explain all of these new features to educators and then facilitate group discussion for each feature about whether and how these new features could or should be included in teaching at the introductory or advanced level. This will provide a valuable opportunity to discuss the features with other Java educators and consider different viewpoints on whether and how to teach the new features.

Participants are expected to have a fair knowledge of the “classic” Java language (as it was around 2004 onwards). Participants should come with a laptop with the latest version of BlueJ installed from www.bluej.org (available for Windows, macOS and x64 Linux).