The objective of this project is to develop a storyboard defining a detailed roadmap for an entire interactive eTextbook on data structures and algorithms, an end-to-end framework for the development process, and several complete prototype sections. The project improves the development of future eTextbooks by demonstrating ways to integrate text, interactivity, and assessment in a creative commons environment. The integration of online textbook content, interactive courseware, collaborative creation, open source, and online assessment benefits students, instructors, content authors, and algorithm visualization developers.
Interactive hypertextbooks are valuable beyond Computer Science since online instruction in many fields can be enhanced by student interaction with well-designed simulations. The project provides an exemplar of how collaborative, open-sourced workflows could be used to develop hypertextbooks for many disciplines. The goal is to allow instructors to modify existing eTextbooks by adopting major portions and then changing sections, or taking text and visualizations from different books and combining them.
This funding supported the initial development for OpenDSA, an open-source eTextbook system and teaching materials for Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) courses. OpenDSA ultimately hopes to solve a number of problems with current DSA courses, including (1) overcoming difficulties that students have with understanding the dynamic aspects of algorithms when they are presented in static media such as text and images, and (2) the lack of practice that students typically get due to the difficulties that instructors have with grading large numbers of paper-based homework exercises. An OpenDSA eTextbook instance integrates textbook-quality content with visualizations for every algorithm presented and interactive exercises that test the students' knowledge of the algorithm by making them demonstrate the key steps of the algorithm. During the period of this funding we have laid the foundations for an ongoing collaborative, open-source effort that seeks to gain the active participation of instructors and students from around the world. As measures of the project's growing success, OpenDSA materials have already been used by nearly 1000 students from nearly a dozen institutions, and over half a million individual exercises have been completed by those students. Student evaluations show that OpenDSA visualizations are well liked by the students. OpenDSA materials are highly customizable. Instructors can select from a growing body of individual modules available to create a course textbook with just the content that they want. Specific exercises can be included or not as the instructor chooses. Since all materials are open source, instructors are free to modify the content if they wish. The ideas demonstrated by OpenDSA should prove valuable beyond Computer Science since online instruction in many fields can be enhanced by student interaction with well-designed visualizations and interactive exercises. The project provides an exemplar of how collaborative, open-sourced workflows can be used to develop eTextbooks for many disciplines.
