CONNECTING STUDENTS TO PROGRAMMING PROJECTS: AUDIO-BASED PROJECTS FOR DATA STRUCTURES

摘要

A common complaint of students in the early Computer Science courses is a lack of connection between given programming projects and the outside world. Often: this cannot be helped since students at that level do not vet have a deep enough understanding or wide enough experience to build sophisticated systems. Thus, instructors often concentrate on critical items common to many applications, leaving assignments hat seem somewhat disconnected. Unfortunately, the very lack of understanding by students that prompted such abstractions in the first place contributes to their missing the importance of the abstraction. In Data Structures, often the second class CS students take in the major, this is especially true. This paper proposes using audio-based projects in Data Structures to provide a connection between students and their previous experiences with computers. The advantage of audio is that students need only some experience in structures and arrays to begin performing some significant manipulations of an audio stream. The fact that students can hear their manipulation seems to make the project "more real". In addition, this paper also gives examples of useful and interesting projects that can be performed within a data, structures context.