FWD: [SIGCSE-members] BRIDGES (Software Infrastructure for Early CS courses) - Invitation to Participate
Lauren Bricker
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Kalpathi Subramanian <k...@uncc.edu>
Date: Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 11:33 AM
Subject: [SIGCSE-members] BRIDGES (Software Infrastructure for Early CS courses) - Invitation to Participate
To: <SIGCSE-...@listserv.acm.org>
We would like to invite new users to BRIDGES, an infrastructure for use in introductory CS courses: CS1, CS2, data structures, and algorithms at the undergraduate level.
BRIDGES provides two capabilities, (1) simplified access to interesting, engaging real-world datasets for use in class projects, and (2) visualizations of the data structures or analysis constructed or performed by the student.
We are expanding BRIDGES with new capabilities for use in CS1, CS2, and algorithms courses. Specifically, we have extended BRIDGES towards simple 2D board based games that are appropriate for CS1, CS2. We also provide tools to measure and benchmark algorithm performance for algorithm analysis courses.
We are interested in attracting new users to BRIDGES and have a limited number of stipends to support the adoption and collect student feedback.
If the above interests you, please read on!
BRIDGES (Bridging Real-world Infrastructure Designed to Goal-align, Engage, and Stimulate), an NSF TUES/IUSE project, is focused on providing easy-to-use interfaces to real-world internet-based information systems, that are exciting and engaging, such as social network data, entertainment(movies, songs), encyclopaedia type systems (Wikipedia), scientific or engineering data. The BRIDGES toolkit provides a set of classes (C++, Java and Python) that serve as building blocks to common CS data structures (arrays, lists, tree structures, graphs, game grids) used in freshmen/sophomore level computer science. BRIDGES makes it easy to (1) import, use and manipulate real-world data sets as part of routine student programming projects, and (2) provides visualizations of the data structures, plots of complexity measures, game grids, all constructed/used by the student as part of his/her project.
See the BRIDGES website main page for some examples. And a short video of what BRIDGES is about on the site.
While the BRIDGES project was originally proposed to support courses in data structures, we are now expanding BRIDGES in the following ways that will make it more attractive to instructors:
1. Algorithms courses: BRIDGES now provides the infrastructure to run algorithms of varying data sizes and generate plots of complexity; this will be useful to give students a stronger foundation in CS, and serve to compare different algorithms or data structures to solve the same problem. These new capabilities will provide a more comprehensive treatment of data structures and algorithms within the same environment, without relying on external tools.
See for instance, a Sorting example and Shortest Path example using Open Street Map data.
2. BRIDGES Games: As demoed at ACM SIGCSE 2019, we have added the ability to build simple 2D board based games using the BRIDGES infrastructure. These capabilities are especially appropriate for CS1, CS2 and high school AP CS curriculum. We currently support non-blocking games and blocking games form Spring 2020.
See this link for additional information and a game tutorial.
3. BRIDGES Assignment Repository: Based on feedback from previous users of BRIDGES, we have begun building a repository of BRIDGES assignments (borrowing from repos like Nifty). In fact, we have implemented many of the Nifty assignments in BRIDGES. The repository will be more friendly to instructors, with detailed descriptions, scaffolding or starter code, sample images of expected output,
and possible extensions.
Check out the repository at this link.
4. New Datasets: Open Street Map, Wikidata can now be accessed via BRIDGES; Guttenberg Book Collection (in progress).
Status:
We have been testing BRIDGES in our data structures and algorithms courses for the past 5 years. Close to 1500 students have been impacted by the project (400 students in the past year) across more than 10 institutions. Surveys of students and pre/post knowledge tests have been quite positive.
Our continued funding from NSF is to promote and disseminate BRIDGES to institutions external to UNC Charlotte. We are interested in partners who are willing to collect student feedback , so that we can accurately measure the impact of BRIDGES on student performance and engagement. We have a limited number of instructor stipends to support this effort. In particular, we are interested in new users teaching algorithms, data structures, CS1, CS2, and high school AP CS courses, who can adopt BRIDGES in their courses in Fall of 2019.
Please contact us if you are interested.
-- krs
BRIDGES Investigators:
Kalpathi Subramanian, (k...@uncc.edu)
Erik Saule (UNC Charlotte), (esa...@uncc.edu)
Jamie Payton (Temple University), (pay...@temple.edu)
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-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kalpathi Subramanian Ph: 704 687 8579 Associate Professor Email: k...@uncc.edu Dept of Computer Science Web:http://webpages.uncc.edu/krs The University of North Carolina Charlotte, NC 28202-0001