CommunityNews

CommunityNews

Teaching Algorithm Design: A Literature Review

Teaching Algorithm Design: A Literature Review.
Algorithm design is a vital skill developed in most undergraduate Computer Science (CS) programs, but few research studies focus on pedagogy related to algorithms coursework. To understand the work that has been done in the area, we present a systematic survey and literature review of CS Education studies. We search for research that is both related to algorithm design and evaluated on undergraduate-level students. Across all papers in the ACM Digital Library prior to August 2023, we only find 94 such papers.
We first classify these papers by topic, evaluation metric, evaluation methods, and intervention target. Through our classification, we find a broad sparsity of papers which indicates that many open questions remain about teaching algorithm design, with each algorithm topic only being discussed in between 0 and 10 papers. We also note the need for papers using rigorous research methods, as only 38 out of 88 papers presenting quantitative data use statistical tests, and only 15 out of 45 papers presenting qualitative data use a coding scheme. Only 17 papers report controlled trials.
We then synthesize the results of the existing literature to give insights into what the corpus reveals about how we should teach algorithms. Much of the literature explores implementing well-established practices, such as active learning or automated assessment, in the algorithms classroom. However, there are algorithms-specific results as well: a number of papers find that students may under-utilize certain algorithmic design techniques, and studies describe a variety of ways to select algorithms problems that increase student engagement and learning.
The results we present, along with the publicly available set of papers collected, provide a detailed representation of the current corpus of CS Education work related to algorithm design and can orient further research in the area.

Read in full here:

This thread was posted by one of our members via one of our news source trackers.

Most Liked

jss

jss

And I recommend The Algorithm Design Manual (Texts in Computer Science) 3rd ed. 2020 Edition
by Steven S. Skiena for learning algorithm design.

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

First poster: wolf4earth
It’s official. Your private communications can (and will) be spied on - European Digital Rights (EDRi). On 6 July, the European Parliame...
New
First poster: AstonJ
:tada: Launching Fig I am excited to announce that, as of today, Fig is generally available to the public for download. With our public ...
New
First poster: joeb
The File System Access API with Origin Private File System. WebKit supports new API that makes it possible for web apps to create, open,...
New
First poster: bot
How a piece of advice became a lifestyle TABLE OF CONTENTS WHERE TO BEGIN… FIRST CONTACT PICKING EMACS FOR LIFE CHEATING ON EMACS SERE...
New
CommunityNews
GitHub - livekit/livekit: Scalable, high-performance WebRTC SFU. SDKs in JavaScript, React, React Native, Flutter, Swift, Kotlin, Unity/C...
New
First poster: bot
API Gateway Trends behind Features: Apache APISIX 3.0 vs. Kong 3.0 - API7.ai. By comparing the open-source API Gateway Apache APISIX and...
New
First poster: bot
Hector Martin (@marcan@treehouse.systems). Attached: 1 image For those wondering why the hell we need all this safety system stuff for...
New
First poster: KnowledgeIsPower
Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust linen <span class="hashtag-icon-placeholder"></span>blog. Introduction My name is K...
New
First poster: joni
My experience trying to write original, full-length human-sounding articles using Claude AI. You can use AI tools like Claude to help yo...
New
First poster: alvinkatojr
There are countless articles why developers should not focus on Frameworks too much and instead learn to understand the underlying langua...
New

Other popular topics Top

ohm
Which, if any, games do you play? On what platform? I just bought (and completed) Minecraft Dungeons for my Nintendo Switch. Other than ...
New
siddhant3030
I’m thinking of buying a monitor that I can rotate to use as a vertical monitor? Also, I want to know if someone is using it for program...
New
dasdom
No chair. I have a standing desk. This post was split into a dedicated thread from our thread about chairs :slight_smile:
New
New
AstonJ
I ended up cancelling my Moonlander order as I think it’s just going to be a bit too bulky for me. I think the Planck and the Preonic (o...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
“Finding the Boundaries” Hero’s Journey with Noel Rappin @noelrappin Even when you’re ultimately right about what the future ho...
New
Rainer
Not sure if following fits exactly this thread, or if we should have a hobby thread… For many years I’m designing and building model air...
New
AstonJ
Seems like a lot of people caught it - just wondered whether any of you did? As far as I know I didn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I...
New
Margaret
Hello everyone! This thread is to tell you about what authors from The Pragmatic Bookshelf are writing on Medium.
1143 25816 759
New
New