NSF Org:	DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education
Recipient:	UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SYSTEM
Initial Amendment Date:	August 17, 2014
Latest Amendment Date:	October 27, 2014
Award Number:	1431399
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Stephanie August DUE  Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU  Directorate for STEM Education
Start Date:	January 1, 2015
End Date:	December 31, 2017 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$99,003.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$99,003.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2014 = $99,003.00
History of Investigator:	Thomas Naps (Principal Investigator) naps@uwosh.edu David Furcy (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh 800 ALGOMA BLVD OSHKOSH WI  US  54901-3551 (920)424-3215
Sponsor Congressional District:	06
Primary Place of Performance:	University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh 800 Algoma Boulevard Oshkosh WI  US  54901-3551
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	06
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	DCYNUU4E7Q66
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s):	S-STEM-Schlr Sci Tech Eng&Math, IUSE
Primary Program Source:	04001415DB NSF Education & Human Resource 1300XXXXDB H-1B FUND, EDU, NSF
Program Reference Code(s):	8209, 9178
Program Element Code(s):	153600, 199800
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.076

ABSTRACT

OpenDSA is an open source project with international collaboration that has the potential to fundamentally change instruction in courses on Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) and Formal Languages and Automata (FLA). By combining textbook-quality content with visualization and a rich collection of automatically assessed interactive exercises, OpenDSA helps students better understand the behavior of algorithms and their effects over time on data structures.

This project will scale up OpenDSA in a number of ways. The highly successful JFLAP software for interactive instruction on FLA will be redeployed within the OpenDSA framework using HTML5 standards, thereby increasing access. A wide range of colleges and universities will be involved in disseminating OpenDSA and assessing its impact on student learning, and OpenDSA's use in a number of innovative instructional settings will be explored. The OpenDSA infrastructure will be enriched, allowing instructors to tailor the materials to their specific classroom needs, and encouraging new content contributions from these instructors. A number of technical pedagogical experiments will be conducted, such as measuring the effects of augmenting content with audio narration in slideshows, and navigation through topics with concept maps. A study of how these materials can improve teaching in a range of courses for which relevant content was created. These efforts will have an impact on future active eTextbook projects by demonstrating successful ways to integrate content, interactivity, and assessment in an open-source, creative-commons environment by focusing on the effects on student learning of integrating content with visualizations and a rich collection of practice exercises with automated feedback. In addition, this project will study how using eTextbook materials affects the evolving pedagogical approaches of instructors of DSA and FLA courses and will experiment with new models of dissemination for open-source content in conjunction with commercial online content publishers.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The OpenDSA project fosters the open source development of interactive learning content in three forms -- standard text, algorithm visualizations, and interactive exercises.  The current state of the OpenDSA Programming Languages book has content in all three of those areas that is now sufficient to support the teaching of a complete programming languages course.

The book includes chapters on grammars, functional programming, the lambda calculus, building an interpreter for a functional language using the environment model of evaluation, parameter passing methods, eager (applicative order) evaluation, lazy (normal order) evaluation, and type checking/inferencing.

The standard text content of the book is supplemented by:

• Implementation of 12 interactive algorithm visualizations.
• Implementation of 37 interactive problem sets comprised of 103 exercises. 50 ofthese exercises are completely randomized in nature.  

During its development, the book has been used in three different iterations of teaching the PL course at UW-Oshkosh.  In each of those three offerings, we have received feedback from students and taken that into account as we worked to complete and improve the book.

Additionally data has been gathered (anonymously and with the approval of the UW-Oshkosh Institutional Review Board) on student usage of the book materials.  We plan to analyze this data and determine what kinds of student interactions with the book foster the best learning outcomes.  For example, in the randomized exercises, students are forced to provide the right answer three times in a row before proceeding.  Data indicates that some students approach such exercises in what appears to be a "guessing mode", providing answers in quick succession, many of which are unfortunately not correct.  Other students take more time between submitting answers and make fewer submissions overall.  We suspect that students in the latter group achieve better learning outcomes when they are later tested on the material in the class.  However, at the moment this remains a hypothesis that we have yet to test.

Last Modified: 03/13/2018
Modified by: Thomas L Naps

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