BRIDGES and Beyond: Strategies for Improving CS Student Engagement and Success

Enrollment in CS programs has exploded in recent years, however, dropout
rates have also been alarmingly high. Engaging today's students in traditional
CS courses is a significant challenge [1] and has led to an explosion of
research and strategies, given the high demand for STEM majors.

In this talk, I will present two ongoing projects targeted at improving
the retention and success of CS majors. I will present BRIDGES, an API that
facilitates the use of real-world data and visualizations in sophomore
level algorithms and data structures courses. I will present results from
the use of BRIDGES in the past 3 years at UNC Charlotte and its impact,
including its use by institutions external to UNC Charlotte.
In the second part of the talk, I will go over lessons learnt from BRIDGES
and the development of new interactive learning modules and ongoing
visual analytics work to further assist instructors and students in the
classroom.