Improving the Structure and Content of Early CS Courses with Well Aligned, Engaging Learning Materials

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Access slides.

Activities

Part 1: Course design and alignment

Navigating Curriculum Guidelines

ACM/IEEE CS 2013 curriculum guidelines

NSF/IEEE-TCPP Parallel and Distributed Computing 2012

What do other instructors do in their course?

Coverage of:

• UNCC ITCS 2214 Data Structure: Saule
• UNCC ITCS 2214 Data Structure: KRS
• VCU CMSC 256 Data Structure and OOP: Duke
• Clovis CSCI 41 Data Structure: Kerney
• BSC 210 Data Structure and Algorithms: Wagner

All DS courses

Principles of Alignment

ITCS 2214 Data Structure Saule: lecture vs assignment

ITCS 2214 Data Structure Saule vs KRS

Searching for content

Select for materials

Part 2: Relevant and engaging content

Making it interactive/visual

• BRIDGES Graph tutorial
• BRIDGES BST tutorial
• BRIDGES Linked List tutorial
• BRIDGES ColorGrid tutorial
• BRIDGES Game tutorial

Making it real

• Repetition in Lyrics
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold
• Indexing Earthquakes
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold
• Bacon Number
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold
• Dijkstra in Your City
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold
• Image Representation/Compression
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold

All dataset supported by BRIDGES

The power of choice

Group 1:

• Linked list using IMDB data
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold
• Linked list using USGS Earthquake data
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold

Group 2:

• Bacon Number
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold
• Maze Solver
  • Viz C++ scaffold Java Scaffold Python scaffold

Some readily available BRIDGES assignments.

Survey

Project Survey

SIGCSE survey

Other

CS Materials

BRIDGES