- Award ID(s):
- 1726809
- PAR ID:
- 10344700
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1371 to 1371
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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HS BRIDGES (https://bridgesuncc.github.io/bridges-hs/) is a collection of programming projects, including "student scaffolds" and "teacher walkthroughs", that use UNC Charlotte's BRIDGES Java Libraries (https://bridgesuncc.github.io/) in order to enable students' creations of data structure- and real world data visualizations. In this Demo, we show sample projects from the HS BRIDGES collection (https://bridgesuncc.github.io/bridges-hs/). We discuss the pedagogy behind the design of our instructional materials, the importance of our "teacher walkthroughs" as supports for teachers who are new to computer science OR who are new to teaching, and the meaningful learning outcomes that students achieve as they solve project problems. Programming agility and understanding of data structures flourish when engaging problem solving challenges, scaffolded learning materials, and dynamic visualizations converge. Overall, we aim to engage session participants with HS BRIDGES projects during the session, and then back home with their students. We've recently published our collection via the Web and we are eager to share the joy of cool visualizations that make data come alive. This work is supported by NSF TUES and NSF IUSE.more » « less
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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.more » « less
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Introduction Elementary teachers face many challenges when including reform-based science instruction in their classrooms, and some teachers have chosen to enhance their science instruction by introducing students to citizen science (CS) projects. When CS projects are incorporated in formal school settings, students have an opportunity to engage in real-world projects as they collect and make sense of data, yet relatively few CS projects offer substantial guidance for teachers seeking to implement the projects, placing a heavy burden on teacher learning.
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Results One teacher adapted the materials to include scaffolding to position students for success in data collection and analysis. In contrast, the second teacher adapted the SBCS support materials to maintain a teacher-centered approach to instruction, identifying perceptions of students’ limited abilities and limited instructional time as constraining factors.
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