The rise in CS enrollments in the past few years has also resulted in a more diverse population of learners that have different expectations, motivations and interests, making it important to provide relevant learning materials in early foundational courses. Grounding Computer Science concepts in reality by solving important real-world or fun problems are keys to increasing students’ motivation and engagement in computing, which may help improve student retention and success.
This workshop provides instructors with a hands-on introduction to BRIDGES, a software infrastructure for programming assignments in early computer science courses, such as CS1, CS2, data structures, and algorithm analysis. BRIDGES provides the tools for creating engaging programming assignments, including: (1) a simplified API for accessing real-world data, such as those from social networks, entertainment (songs, movies), science, engineering (USGIS Earthquakes, elevation maps), geography (OpenStreet maps), and literature (Project Gutenberg), (2) creating visualizations of the data, (3) an easy to use API for game-based assignments, and, (4) algorithm benchmarking. Workshop attendees will engage in hands-on experience using BRIDGES with multiple datasets, have the opportunity to discuss the challenges they face in their own courses, and how BRIDGES can be used in their own courses. Using BRIDGES in data structures, algorithms, and other courses have shown improved retention of CS knowledge and better student performance in follow-on courses, when compared to students from other sections of the same course. BRIDGES has impacted nearly 2000 students across 20 institutions since its inception 5 years ago. A repository of BRIDGES assignments is now maintained for instructors using BRIDGES in their classes.
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Engaging Early Programming Students with Modern Assignments Using BRIDGES
Early programming courses, such as CS1, are an important time to
capture the interest of the students while imparting important technical
knowledge. Yet many CS1 sections use contrived assignments and activities that tend to make students uninterested and doubt the usefulness
of the content. We demonstrate that one can make an interesting CS1
experience for students by coupling interesting datasets with visual representations and interactive applications. Our approach enables teaching
an engaging early programming course without changing the content of
that course. This approach relies on the BRIDGES system that has been
under development for the past 5 years; BRIDGES provides easy access
to datasets and interactive applications. The assignments we present
are all scaffolded to be directly integrated into most early programming
courses to make routine topics more compelling and exciting.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10158625
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- CCSC CP
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
