Collaborative Research: Retaining and Engaging Computer Science majors By Solving and Visualizing Algorithmic Problems on Real-world Data Sets

本科计算机教育的头两年对培养学生来说是最关键的吗？基础知识，并保持对计算机科学的兴趣。知识和兴趣都有助于学生发展良好的计算机科学技能，也增强了他们留在计算机科学专业的决心。这个项目将试图通过为一个名为Bridge的软件程序添加新功能来增加学生的知识和兴趣。布里奇斯帮助教师为数据结构和算法方面的二年级课程创建引人入胜的作业。为了帮助学生了解数据结构，网桥使学生能够轻松地使用来自真实世界信息系统(如流行的社交网络和科学资源)的大型动态数据集填充自己的数据结构。Bridge还允许学生与他们自己的数据结构的可视化交互。初步结果表明，与没有使用网桥的数据结构课程的同龄人相比，学习网桥课程的学生获得了更多的知识，在专业上取得了更好的进步。这个项目将通过增加代码分析功能和与学生兴趣相关的新数据源来增强桥梁。这些增强旨在支持数据结构主题的更深层次覆盖，这可能会进一步增加学生的参与度和学习。为了更深入地研究桥梁的影响，将在其他三个机构采用和研究桥梁。这一扩展将使评估桥梁对不同学生群体的影响成为可能。这个项目的重点是留住学生和建立一支更加多样化的STEM劳动力队伍，从而服务于国家利益。该项目的目标是扩展Bridge课程，提供吸引人的、相关的作业，并加强基本编程技能，如数组寻址，以减少数据结构课程头几周的退学人数。第二个目标是遵循最佳实践，让代表人数不足的学生参与计算。计算复杂性将通过在不同规模的业绩报告和现实世界算法问题的桥梁中的系统支持来纳入，以提供增长订单的经验。该项目还将延伸到数据结构课程之外，进入典型的CS1/CS2课程。桥梁将被三个合作机构采用，包括非博士授予机构和一所文理学院，每年将直接接触到1000多名学生。这种多样性将支持研究桥梁对学生参与和跨学生群体学习的影响。此外，来自STAR计算队的学生将把桥梁材料纳入他们的外联计划中，向K-12学生介绍计算概念，以接触到更多样化的学生群体。STAR计算队是一个旨在扩大计算参与的全国性联盟。

The first two years of undergraduate Computer Science education are the most critical for building students? foundational knowledge and sustaining their interest in computer science. Both knowledge and interest help students not only develop good skills in computer science, but also increase their resolve to stay in the computer science major. This project will try to increase student knowledge and interest by adding new functionality to a software program called BRIDGES. BRIDGES helps instructors create engaging assignments for sophomore-level courses on data structures and algorithms. To help them learn about data structures, BRIDGES enables students to easily populate their own data structures with large, dynamic data sets from real-world information systems, such as popular social networks and scientific sources. Bridges also allows students to interact with visualizations of their own data structures. Preliminary results have shown that, in comparison to their peers whose data structures courses did not use BRIDGES, students in BRIDGES-enabled courses have greater knowledge gains and better progression through the major. This project will enhance BRIDGES by adding code analysis functions and new data sources that are relevant to student interests. These enhancements aim to support deeper coverage of data structures topics, which may further increase student engagement and learning. To study the impact of BRIDGES more thoroughly, BRIDGES will be adopted and studied at three other institutions. This expansion will enable evaluation of the impact of BRIDGES on different student populations. This project serves the national interest through its focus on increasing retention of students and building a more diverse STEM workforce.The goal of this project is to extend the BRIDGES curriculum to provide engaging, relevant assignments and strengthen basic programming skills such as array addressing to reduce the number of withdrawals in the first weeks of data structure courses. A second goal is to follow best practices for engaging underrepresented students in computing. Computational complexity will be incorporated through system support in BRIDGES for performance reporting and real world algorithmic problems at different scales to afford experience with orders of growth. The project will also extend beyond the data structures course and into typical CS1/CS2 courses. BRIDGES will be adopted at three partnering institutions, including non-PhD granting institution and a liberal arts college, and will directly reach over 1000 students each year. That diversity will support studying the impact of BRIDGES on student engagement and learning across populations of students. In addition, students from the STARS Computing Corps, a national alliance for broadening participation in computing, will incorporate BRIDGES materials within their outreach programs that introduce computing concepts to K-12 students to reach an even more diverse population of students.