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.
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Some Bridges Span More than Water: Engaging High School Java Learners with Data Structure Visualizations and Real-World Data
Many high school mathematics teachers have stepped up to the charge of learning computer science and offering CS courses to their students. As CS grows in popularity, more students are completing AP CS A as sophomores or juniors, and looking for advanced opportunities while still in high school.
Our project seeks to support high school teachers in their quests to meet students' needs for advanced CS coursework. I am one such teacher who faced that need, and was relieved to find the BRIDGES libraries and projects repository website for CS college professors. I began the work of adapting their data structures related projects for use in my courses. Solving Java programming challenges using BRIDGES libraries has helped my students visualize and program with one- and two-dimensional arrays and linked lists.
In this talk, we encourage/recruit high school teachers to try our adapted-for-high-school BRIDGES materials, and share in the joy of cool visualizations that make data structures come alive. Using one sample project, I will show how an engaging problem, scaffolded learning materials, and dynamic visualizations converge to facilitate student understanding of, and programming agility with, two-dimensional arrays.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1726809
- NSF-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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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.more » « less
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null (Ed.)To meet the rising demand for computer science (CS) courses, K-12 educators need to be prepared to teach introductory concepts and skills in courses such as Computer Science Principles (CSP), which takes a breadth-first approach to CS and includes topics beyond programming such as data, impacts of computing, and networks. Educators are now also being asked to teach more advanced concepts in courses such as the College Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science A (CSA) course, which focuses on advanced programming using Java and includes topics such as objects, inheritance, arrays, and recursion. Traditional CSA curricula have not used content or pedagogy designed to engage a broad range of learners and support their success. Unlike CSP, which is attracting more underrepresented students to computing as it was designed, CSA continues to enroll mostly male, white, and Asian students [College Board 2019, Ericson 2020, Sax 2020]. In order to expand CS education opportunities, it is crucial that students have an engaging experience in CSA similar to CSP. Well-designed differentiated professional development (PD) that focuses on content and pedagogy is necessary to meet individual teacher needs, to successfully build teacher skills and confidence to teach CSA, and to improve engagement with students [Darling-Hammond 2017]. It is critical that as more CS opportunities and courses are developed, teachers remain engaged with their own learning in order to build their content knowledge and refine their teaching practice [CSTA 2020]. CSAwesome, developed and piloted in 2019, offers a College Board endorsed AP CSA curriculum and PD focused on supporting the transition of teachers and students from CSP to CSA. This poster presents preliminary findings aimed at exploring the supports and challenges new-to-CSA high school level educators face when transitioning from teaching an introductory, breadth-first course such as CSP to teaching the more challenging, programming-focused CSA course. Five teachers who completed the online CSAwesome summer 2020 PD completed interviews in spring 2021. The project employed an inductive coding scheme to analyze interview transcriptions and qualitative notes from teachers about their experiences learning, teaching, and implementing CSP and CSA curricula. Initial findings suggest that teachers’ experience in the CSAwesome PD may improve their confidence in teaching CSA, ability to effectively use inclusive teaching practices, ability to empathize with their students, problem-solving skills, and motivation to persist when faced with challenges and difficulties. Teachers noted how the CSAwesome PD provided them with a student perspective and increased feelings of empathy. Participants spoke about the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on their own learning, student learning, and teaching style. Teachers enter the PD with many different backgrounds, CS experience levels, and strengths, however, new-to-CSA teachers require further PD on content and pedagogy to transition between CSP and CSA. Initial results suggest that the CSAwesome PD may have an impact on long-term teacher development as new-to-CSA teachers who participated indicated a positive impact on their teaching practices, ideologies, and pedagogies.more » « less
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> Context • In 1972, Papert emphasized that “[t]he important difference between the work of a child in an elementary mathematics class and […]a mathematician” is “not in the subject matter […]but in the fact that the mathematician is creatively engaged […]” Along with creative, Papert kept saying children should be engaged in projects rather than problems. A project is not just a large problem, but involves sustained, active engagement, like children’s play. For Papert, in 1972, computer programming suggested a flexible construction medium, ideal for a research-lab/playground tuned to mathematics for children. In 1964, without computers, Sawyer also articulated research-playgrounds for children, rooted in conventional content, in which children would learn to act and think like mathematicians. > Problem • This target article addresses the issue of designing a formal curriculum that helps children develop the mathematical habits of mind of creative tinkering, puzzling through, and perseverance. I connect the two mathematicians/educators – Papert and Sawyer – tackling three questions: How do genuine puzzles differ from school problems? What is useful about children creating puzzles? How might puzzles, problem-posing and programming-centric playgrounds enhance mathematical learning? > Method • This analysis is based on forty years of curriculum analysis, comparison and construction, and on research with children. > Results • In physical playgrounds most children choose challenge. Papert’s ideas tapped that try-something-new and puzzle-it-out-for-yourself spirit, the drive for challenge. Children can learn a lot in such an environment, but what (and how much) they learn is left to chance. Formal educational systems set standards and structures to ensure some common learning and some equity across students. For a curriculum to tap curiosity and the drive for challenge, it needs both the playful looseness that invites exploration and the structure that organizes content. > Implications • My aim is to provide support for mathematics teachers and curriculum designers to design or teach in accord with their constructivist thinking. > Constructivist content • This article enriches Papert’s constructionism with curricular ideas from Sawyer and from the work that I and my colleagues have donemore » « less
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Many newcomers to programming and computational thinking have been brought up on interactive, gamified learning environments. Introductory computer science courses at the university level need to dig deeper into these topics, but must do so with similarly engaging technologies and projects. To address this need, we have built a framework for a grid-based game API with event-based blocking and continuous non-blocking interfaces. The framework abstracts away much of the complexity of inputs and rendering and exposes a simple game grid similar to a 2D array indexed by rows and columns. As such, our project helps reinforce basic computing concepts (arrays, loops, OOP, recursion) with a customizable and engaging game interface. We have discussed the valuable influence of visual representations of student's data structures using BRIDGES in previous publications, and believe our game API can provide significance and intrigue for students in introductory courses and beyond. Our Bridges Games App website (http://bridges-games.herokuapp.com/) presents descriptions and instructions.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3439558
