Teaching with the gridworld case study: tutorial presentation
Paul T. Tymann · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2008
Case studies expose students to large programs, enabling them to understand the importance of design and good programming style while encouraging teamwork and active learning. While there are some excellent sources of good programming examples, most are not at the CS-1 level. Creating an appropriate program to illustrate the key ideas of CS-1 is one of the largest obstacles. Fortunately, there are some existing case studies which can be used. The AP Computer Science curriculum has used case studies since 1995 and performance on case study exam questions shows a significantly smaller score difference between males and females than non-case study questions. Beginning this year, the AP CS curriculum includes the GridWorld Case Study. The first portion of the workshop will introduce the participants to the GridWorld environment allowing them to explore GridWorld through a series of guided activities which demonstrate inheritance and class interaction. During the second portion of the workshop participants will be shown examples of how the GridWorld Case Study can be used in a typical Computer Science 1 course.