Title
Transforming introductory computer science projects via real-time web data
Abstract
While computing is becoming increasingly distributed, programming projects in introductory classes remain mostly divorced from the student's day-to-day computing experiences. These experiences entail interacting with real-time Web-based data from sources that include weather reports, news updates, and restaurant recommendations. The disconnect between student experiences and the content of their programming projects is known to drive some students away from computing. In addition, to adequately prepare students for the realities of modern software engineering, educators should introduce issues pertaining to distributed computing early in the curriculum. To address these problems, we have created RealTimeWeb - an architectural framework that makes real-time web data accessible for introductory programming projects. The framework effectively introduces important real-time distributed computing concepts without overwhelming students with the low-level details that working with such data typically requires. Preliminary results indicate that our approach can be effective in the context of a typical CS2 course, and that real-time data is relevant to students. RealTimeWeb libraries and associated resources are publicly available for use, with multiple language bindings to many real-time data sources. A rapid-prototyping tool available through the project's website facilitates the development of client libraries with easily accessible APIs for new real-time Web-based data sources.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2538862.2538941
SIGCSE
Keywords
Field
DocType
introductory programming project,real-time data source,new real-time web-based data,accessible apis,realtimeweb library,real-time web-based data,real-time web data,introductory computer science project,real-time data,programming project,day-to-day computing experience,projects,distributed computing
Real-time web,World Wide Web,Computer science,Architecture framework,Curriculum,Multimedia
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.80
2
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Austin Cory Bart1257.21
Eli Tilevich247551.95
T. Simin Hall3242.34
Tony Allevato460.80
Clifford A. Shaffer5999131.98