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1. Motivating CS Majors Using Real-World Data, Games and Visualizations Using BRIDGES (Workshop)

   Kalpathi Subramanian, Erik Saule (April 2022, Journal of Computer Science in Colleges (North Eastern Conference))

   Despite increasing enrollments in CS in recent years, retention of CS majors to meet current and future workforce needs remains a major concern. Grounding Computer Science concepts by solving important real-world problems or fun problems can be keys to increasing students’ motivation and engagement in computing, and may provide a path to improving retention in CS programs. This tutorial provides instructors with a hands-on introduction to BRIDGES, a software infrastructure for programming assignments in early computer science courses, including introductory programming (CS1, CS2), data structures, and algorithm analysis. BRIDGES provides capabilities for creating engaging programming assignments, including: (1) a simplified API for accessing real-world data sets}, including social networks; scientific, government, and civic organization data; and movie, music, and literature collections; (2) interesting visualizations of the data, (3) an easy to use API that supports creation of games, and, (4) algorithm benchmarking. Workshop attendees will engage in hands-on experience with BRIDGES and will have the opportunity to discuss how BRIDGES can be used in their own courses. 

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2. Real-World Problems, Data, and Visualizations Using BRIDGES (PreConference Workshop)

   Kalpathi Subramanian, Erik Saule (January 2022, Journal of Computer Science in Colleges (Central Plains))

   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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3. Bringing Real-World Data and Visualizations of Student-Implemented Data Structures into Sophomore CS Courses Using BRIDGES

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287536  

   Subramanian, Kalpathi; Payton, Jamie; Saule, Erik (March 2019, Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   This workshop introduces participants to the concepts and use of BRIDGES, a software infrastructure for programming assignments in data structures and algorithms courses. BRIDGES provides two key capabilities, (1) easy to use interface to real world datasets spanning social networks, entertainment (movies on IMDB, song lyrics), scientific data (real-time USGIS Earthquake Data), civic issues (crime data), and literature (books); and (2) a visualization of the acquired data can be used in assignments by students to populate their implemented data structures, including the capability to bring out attributes of the dataset. The visualizations are displayed on the BRIDGES website and are easily shared (with family, friends, peers, etc) via a weblink. Workshop attendees will engage in hands-on experience with BRIDGES and multiple datasets and will have the opportunity to discuss how BRIDGES can be used in their own courses, as well as partner with the BRIDGES team. 

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4. Bringing Real-World Data And Visualizations Into Data Structures Courses Using BRIDGES

   https://doi.org/10.1145/2839509.2850512  

   Subramanian, Kalpathi; Payton, Jamie; Burlinson, David; Mehedint, Mihai (January 2016, ACM SIGCSE 2016)

   This demo introduces participants to the concepts and application of BRIDGES, a software infrastructure designed to facilitate hands-on experience for solving traditional problems in introductory computer science courses using data from real-world systems that are of interest to students, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Maps. BRIDGES provides access to real-world data sets for use in traditional data structures programming assignments, without requiring students to work with complex and varied APIs to acquire such data. BRIDGES also helps the students to explore and understand the use of data structures by providing each student with a visualization of operations performed on the student's own implementation of a data structure. BRIDGES visualizations can be easily shared (via a weblink) with peers, friends, and family. Demo attendees will see (and possibly engage in) hands-on experience with BRIDGES and will have the opportunity to discuss how BRIDGES can be used to support various introductory computer science courses. Additionally, the demo will complement our oral presentation of our work at SIGCSE, by providing hands-on demonstrations of BRIDGES. 

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5. Retaining and Engaging CS Majors Using BRIDGES

   Subramanian, Kalpathi; Payton, Jamie; Saule, Erik (February 2019, Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (NSF Showcase))

   In this poster we present BRIDGES, a software infrastructure for programming assignments in data structures and algorithms courses, that has been in use at multiple institutions over the past 2 years. BRIDGES was developed to engage students at the sophomore level in critical foundational courses, to improve retention and reduce attrition rates. BRIDGES provides two key capabilities: (1) easy to use interface to real world datasets spanning social networks, entertainment (movies on IMDB, song lyrics), scientific data (real-time USGIS Earthquake Data), civic issues (crime data), and literature (books); and (2) a visualization of the acquired data can be used in assignments by students to populate their implemented data structures, including the capability to bring out attributes of the dataset. The visualizations are displayed on the BRIDGES website and are easily shared (with family, friends, peers, etc) via a weblink. Visitors will see several example datasets being used in data structure visualizations using BRIDGES, and see how BRIDGES can be used in their own courses, as well as partner with the BRIDGES team. 

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