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BRIDGES is a software framework for creating engaging assignments for required courses such as data structures and algorithms. It provides students with a simplified API that populates their own data structure implementations with live and real-world data, and provides the ability for students to easily visualize the data structures they create as part of routine classroom exercises. The objective is to use the infrastructure to promote a better understanding of the data structure and its underlying algorithms. This report describes the BRIDGES infrastructure and provides evaluation data collected over the first five years of the project. In the first 2 years, as we were developing the BRIDGES projects, our focus was on gathering data to assess whether the addition of the BRIDGES exercises had an effect on student retention of core concepts in data structures; and throughout the 5-year duration of the project, student interest and faculty feedback were collected online and anonymously. A mixed method design was used to evaluate the project impact. A quasiexperimental design compared student cohorts who were enrolled in comparable course sections that used BRIDGES with those that did not. Qualitative and quantitative measures were developed and used together with course grades and grade point averages. Interest and relevance in BRIDGES programming assignments was assessed with additional survey data from students and instructors. Results showed that students involved in BRIDGES projects demonstrated larger gains in knowledge of data structures compared to students enrolled in comparable course sections, as well as long-term benefits in their performance in four follow-on required courses. Survey responses indicated that some investment of time was needed to use BRIDGES, but the extra efforts were associated with several notable outcomes. Students and instructors had positive perceptions of the value of engaging in BRIDGES projects. BRIDGES can become a tool to get students more engaged in critical foundational courses, demonstrating relevance and context to today’s computational challenges. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

We present a course design model for applying project-based learning to an online undergraduate object oriented systems course. In our model, projects and reflection are central to the curriculum. Our model challenges students through modularized, repetitive project cycles beginning with analysis and design (i.e. using pseudo- code, flowcharts, diagrams) then coding, debugging, testing, and finally, reflection. We analyzed student reflection responses from two semesters to extract major themes and sub-themes, then mapped these to the MUSIC model (eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, Interest, Caring) to understand our model's influence on student engagement and motivation. We found that a rhythmic project cycle encourages self-regulation in online students to formulate project plans, track their progress, and evaluate their solutions. Online students feel empowered when course projects promote choice, flexibility, creativity, experimentation, and extensions to other applications. Online student success is dependent on the clarity of instructions, course scaffolding, level of challenge, instructor feedback, and opportunities to reflect on personal failure, success, and challenge. Online students are interested in projects that are familiar, real-world, and fun, but expect to be situated in team-based environments. Students appreciate instructors who are caring and accommodating to personal needs. We recommend six salient strategies for improving online course and project design: design a visible, rhythmic structure; set transparent expectations and instructions; encourage design before implementation; connect to real-world applications and tools; experience happy challenges; infuse sustained reflection. 

This workshop 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 more engaging programming assignments, including: (1) a simplified API for accessing real-world data sets, including from social networks; scientific, government, and civic organizations; and movie, music, and literature collections; (2) interesting visualizations of the data, (3) an easy to use API that supports creation of games that leverage real-world data, and, (4) algorithm benchmarking. Workshop attendees will engage in hands-on experience with BRIDGES with multiple datasets and will have the opportunity to discuss how BRIDGES can be used in their own courses.