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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.
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Location Based Assignments in Early CS Courses Using BRIDGES Engages Students
Freshmen and sophomore level courses in computer science are critical to long-term student development and success. At the same time, these courses, such as data structures and algorithms are usually challenging and require significant motivation to keep students engaged. In this work, we present through our BRIDGES system a set of location based assignments that can serve to reinforce core concepts and algorithms by placing them in more meaningful settings and applications, and demonstrate the relevance of computing in the early stages of a student's career. We performed a small pilot study using a subset of these assignments in a special topics course on algorithms, and conducted student surveys after each assignment. The surveys were unanimously positive, and the students enjoyed coding the algorithms as well as the datasets and visualizations associated with the assignments.
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- PAR ID:
- 10396364
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of computing sciences in colleges
- Volume:
- 38
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1937-4771
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 107-116
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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