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BRIDGES: A System to Enable Creation of Engaging Data Structures Assignments with Real-World Data and Visualizations

Authors:

David Burlinson,

Mihai Mehedint,

Chris Grafer,

Kalpathi Subramanian,

Jamie Payton,

Paula Goolkasian,

Michael Youngblood,

Robert KosaraAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education

Pages 18 - 23

https://doi.org/10.1145/2839509.2844635

Published: 17 February 2016 Publication History

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Abstract

Although undergraduate enrollment in Computer Science has remained strong and seen substantial increases in the past decade, retention of majors remains a significant concern, particularly for students at the freshman and sophomore level that are tackling foundational courses on algorithms and data structures. In this work, we present BRIDGES, a software infrastructure designed to enable the creation of more engaging assignments in introductory data structures courses by providing students with a simplified API that allows them to populate their own data structure implementations with live, real-world, and interesting data sets, such as those from popular social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). BRIDGES also provides the ability for students to create and explore {\em visualizations} of the execution of the data structures that they construct in their course assignments, which can promote better understanding of the data structure and its underlying algorithms; these visualizations can be easily shared via a weblink with peers, family, and instructional staff. In this paper, we present the BRIDGES system, its design, architecture and its use in our data structures course over two semesters.

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McQuaigue MLarson MSmith PMelech SSubramanian KSaule E(2024)Engaging CS1 Students with Audio Themed AssignmentsJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3665609.366562039:8(158-172)Online publication date: 17-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3665609.3665620
Jalalitabar MWang YHu Q(2024)Teaching Programming Concepts with Visualization: A Systematic Overview and Lessons Learned2024 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC)10.1109/ISEC61299.2024.10665100(1-7)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISEC61299.2024.10665100
Burlinson DMcquaigue MGoncharow ASubramanian KSaule EPayton JGoolkasian P(2023)BRIDGES: Real world data, assignments and visualizations to engage and motivate CS majorsEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-023-11958-429:9(10649-10675)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11958-4
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Index Terms

BRIDGES: A System to Enable Creation of Engaging Data Structures Assignments with Real-World Data and Visualizations
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education

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Reviews

Reviewer: Andrew Brooks

Using visualizations to help students learn about data structures and algorithms has long been thought worthwhile. The BRIDGES (short for bridging real-world infrastructure designed to goal-align, engage, and stimulate) software infrastructure builds on earlier approaches by providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to make it easy for students to use real-world, Internet-based data in their programming assignments. The high-level client-server architecture of BRIDGES, the nature of a typical program that makes use of BRIDGES client classes, and various resultant visualizations are all described. An evaluation of the use of BRIDGES by students in two course sections was undertaken. The results of pre-/post-tests show that students using BRIDGES had almost double the knowledge gain on average compared to students in a control group. Unfortunately, the BRIDGES instructor used the post-test as part of the final exam while control group instructors used the post-test simply as a noncounting classroom exercise. This validity threat, which would be regarded as fatal by some researchers, is made clear to the reader, and the investigators are to be commended for their honesty. Questionnaire results are largely positive, but the questions used did not specifically address visualization or the use of real-world data. On reading this paper, some instructors might be left questioning if it would not in fact be better to expose students fully to web application development rather than shield them from it by using BRIDGES and convenience APIs. Despite the shortcomings of the evaluation, this paper is strongly recommended to instructors of data structures and algorithms. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education

February 2016

768 pages

ISBN:9781450336857

DOI:10.1145/2839509

General Chairs:
Carl Alphonce
University at Buffalo
,
Jodi Tims
Baldwin Wallace University
,
Program Chairs:
Michael Caspersen
Aarhus University
,
Stephen Edwards
Virginia Tech University

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 February 2016

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National Science Foundation

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SIGCSE '16

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SIGCSE

SIGCSE '16: The 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education

March 2 - 5, 2016

Tennessee, Memphis, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 105 of 297 submissions, 35%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

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SIGCSE Virtual 2024

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1st ACM Virtual Global Computing Education Conference

December 5 - 8, 2024

Virtual Event , NC , USA

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McQuaigue MLarson MSmith PMelech SSubramanian KSaule E(2024)Engaging CS1 Students with Audio Themed AssignmentsJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3665609.366562039:8(158-172)Online publication date: 17-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3665609.3665620
Jalalitabar MWang YHu Q(2024)Teaching Programming Concepts with Visualization: A Systematic Overview and Lessons Learned2024 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC)10.1109/ISEC61299.2024.10665100(1-7)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISEC61299.2024.10665100
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11958-4
Hazzan OMike KHazzan OMike K(2023)The Interdisciplinarity ChallengeGuide to Teaching Data Science10.1007/978-3-031-24758-3_6(85-99)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2023
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Blanchard JHott JBerry VCarroll REdmison BGlassey RKarnalim OPlancher BRussell SQuille KAlshaigy BBecker BQuille KLaakso M(2022)Stop Reinventing the Wheel! Promoting Community Software in Computing EducationProceedings of the 2022 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3571785.3574129(261-292)Online publication date: 27-Dec-2022
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Feijóo-García PKapoor AGardner-McCune CRagan E(2022)Effects of a Block-Based Scaffolded Tool on Students’ Introduction to Hierarchical Data StructuresIEEE Transactions on Education10.1109/TE.2021.310960465:2(191-199)Online publication date: 1-May-2022
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Reviews

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