Using visualizations to help students learn about data structures and algorithms has long been thought worthwhile. The BRIDGES (short for bridging real-world infrastructure designed to goal-align, engage, and stimulate) software infrastructure builds on earlier approaches by providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to make it easy for students to use real-world, Internet-based data in their programming assignments. The high-level client-server architecture of BRIDGES, the nature of a typical program that makes use of BRIDGES client classes, and various resultant visualizations are all described.

An evaluation of the use of BRIDGES by students in two course sections was undertaken. The results of pre-/post-tests show that students using BRIDGES had almost double the knowledge gain on average compared to students in a control group. Unfortunately, the BRIDGES instructor used the post-test as part of the final exam while control group instructors used the post-test simply as a noncounting classroom exercise. This validity threat, which would be regarded as fatal by some researchers, is made clear to the reader, and the investigators are to be commended for their honesty. Questionnaire results are largely positive, but the questions used did not specifically address visualization or the use of real-world data.

On reading this paper, some instructors might be left questioning if it would not in fact be better to expose students fully to web application development rather than shield them from it by using BRIDGES and convenience APIs.

Despite the shortcomings of the evaluation, this paper is strongly recommended to instructors of data structures and algorithms.