Abstract
Our Data Structures Course, first taught in 1973, was originally conceived as the keystone course of our computer science curriculum. Our curriculum's original design was influenced by Curriculum '68 and the undergraduate computer science program at Penn State University. However, we had to adapt our program to our small college environment and include a curriculum track with a business emphasis. We felt that regardless of which track in our program a student might follow, theory/systems or business/DP, there must be a strong nucleus common to both tracks. For this reason we concentrated on developing four strong courses that would be given as the freshman and sophomore year component of our curriculum.
As part of this, we also saw the need for software tools to support these courses. From this, a structured programming preprocessor evolved. However, as part of this preprocessor we included timing and dynamic storage allocation features. Through a strong emphasis on structured programming that begins with our first computer science course, our second course introduces many discrete structure concepts-queues, stacks, trees, graphs, etc... Our third course is a course in assembler level programming and computer organization. These courses provide a strong foundation for our Data Structures course.
- 1 Beidler, John and John Meinke, "PLUS-An Approach to Programming Emphasizing Analysis and Documentation", IEEE Workshop, Williamsburg, VA, July 1977.Google Scholar
- 2 Beidler, John and John Meinke, "Data Structures for Sophomores", AEDS Conference, Atlanta, GA, May 1978.Google Scholar
- 3 C3S, "Curriculum Recommendations", SIGCSE Bulletin, August 1977.Google Scholar
- 4 Meinke, John and John Beidler, "Experience with a Computer Science Curriculum in a Small College":, IEEE Curriculum Workshop, Orlando, FLA, February 1978.Google Scholar
- 5 Pfaltz, John, Computer Data Structures, McGraw Hill, 1977. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- 6 Tremblay, Jean Paul, and Paul Sorenson, Introduction to Data Structures with Applications, McGraw Hill, 1976. Google Scholar
Digital Library
Index Terms
A software tool for teaching Data Structures
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