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Title: 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.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2142381 1726809
PAR ID:
10396364
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
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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