A framework for CS1 and CS2 laboratories

Abstract

The development and implementation of closed laboratories in the undergraduate curriculum continues to be an important trend in computer science education. Most textbooks intended for use in CS1 and CS2 level courses are now supplemented with closed laboratory manuals. Many instructors have reported efforts to incorporate closed labs into other courses as well. The National Science Foundation has funded several projects of both local and national scope aimed at promoting the integration of closed laboratories into the undergraduate curriculum. In this paper we describe the experimental authorware system PHIL, which is designed to create laboratory exercises for computer science courses, particularly CS1 and CS2. The outputs of this system are interactive MS Windows “laboratory” documents, which guide students through a series of activities and questions. These activities and questions are presented via windows which provide the students with objectives, instructions, and different types of controls for student responses (such as text edit fields). Activity windows can be linked with useful external applications, such as compilers, through buttons to permit easy access. Menu choices allow the student to save and retrieve lab documents from disk, as well as print equivalent hard-copy versions of the documents. Authors using the system can create new lab programs by customizing and recombining pre-existing activities, or can create entirely new activities based on predefined templates. The PHL system is based on parallel hierarchies of lab activity objects developed using Borland C++ and ObjectWindows, the Borland framework for creating MS Windows applications. The goals of this system are to encourage reuse of lab material developed for CS1 and CS2 courses, to provide a convenient and extensible environment for developing CS lab material, and to provide a stimulating and sophisticated closed lab environment for lower division CS courses.