About BRIDGES

BRIDGES is an NSF TUES and NSF IUSE supported project which

  1. provides easy-to-use interfaces to exciting, engaging real-world data (social networks, scientific data, etc), to make it possible for their use in freshmen/sophomore level CS courses,
  2. makes it easy to visualize course assignments in a CS1, CS2, data structures, or algorithm courses
  3. is carefully designed to augment the student experience in routine introductory courses in Computer Science
Here is a quick video introduction:


Features

Data Structures

  • Arrays:
    • 1D
    • 2D
    • 3D
    • Images
    • Sound Track
  • Linked List:
    • Singly
    • Doubly
    • Circular
    • MultiList
  • Trees:
    • General
    • Binary
    • Search Trees
    • Spatial
  • Graph:
    • Adjacency List
    • Adjacency Matrix

Data Sets

  • IMDB Actor/Movie
  • Wikidata Actor/Movie
  • USGS Earthquakes
  • IGN Video game reviews
  • Shakespeare's work
  • Guttenberg's Books
  • Genius' Song Lyrics
  • CDC's Cancer Incidents
  • Open Street Maps

Games.

  • 32x32 grid
  • Predefined sprites
  • 10 buttons

Visuals

  • Images
  • Vector Images
  • Line Charts

C++

Java

Python

Benefits to using BRIDGES

Instructors can use Bridges as part of their courses and do not have to change what they teach. The students can do assignment on the same topics they would already be doing it, but with additional engagement provided by meaningful datasets and compelling visualization. Students like the social component by sharing their cool assignments over the web.

BRIDGES Status

Current Version: BRIDGES version 3.1.0 (August 15, 2020). Version 3.1.0 includes:

See the changelog on latest changes to BRIDGES and its history of earlier changes.

Looking for New BRIDGES Users

We are currently looking for additional external users to adopt BRIDGES in their data structures/algorithms courses and provide feedback. Stipends are available for instructors who would like to partner with our team and collect student feedback as part of the BRIDGES evaluation. Technical support by the Bridges team will be provided.

Looking for New BRIDGES Developers

We are currently looking for students to help with Bridges. We are recruiting both Undergraduate students and PhD student.

The students will need to be enrolled at UNC Charlotte, or at Temple University. Stipends are available for students working on Bridges.

Contact Us! for more information.

Acknowledgements

The BRIDGES project is funded by the National Science Foundation through a TUES grant DUE-1245841 and IUSE grants DUE-1726809, DUE-214381.

BRIDGES Examples

  1. A singly linked list using a reduced version of the IMDB actor/movie dataset.
  2. Bacon Number and Path Computation using the IMDB actor/movie dataset. Example illustrates the path between Kevin Bacon and James Earl Jones.
  3. A binary search tree built using earthquake magnitudes; data from the USGIS earthquake feed (periodically retrieved and stored on server, so as to always access the most recent quakes).
  4. Graph of earthquake data, clustered by magnitude and colorcoded by quake magnitude.
  5. Graph of IMDB actor/movie data, clustered by genre and colorcoded by movie ratings.
  6. 2D grid structure example that can form the basis for a variety of image processing operations.