Video games challenge and motivate data structure students

ABSTRACT

At North Carolina Central University, our computer science majors complete one year of introductory programming before tackling more advanced data structures such as queues, stacks, heaps and graphs. Because of their lack of proficiency, the kinds of programs they have written in the past have been limited to simple problems such as computing grade point averages, and calculating the value of fictional inventories - pretty dry stuff. We set out to motivate our second year students with challenging, but fun programming assignments. Our work resulted in three video game projects that use many of the fundamental data structures, but are straightforward to implement in about two weeks, by a prepared student.

REFERENCES

• 1: Nell Dale, Programming in Pascal, D. C. Heath and Company, Lexington, MA, 1990
• 2: Daniel F. Stubbs , Neil W. Webre, Data structures with abstract data types and Pascal: 2nd edition, Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, 1989

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
Data Structures, Education