Tutorial 102: CS2Mulch: Physical Manipulatives for Teaching Advanced Data Structures
This tutorial will guide participants in how to use the CS2Mulch project, which provides engaging manipulatives specifically developed for physically demonstrating concepts in advanced data structures. Instructors can use these tools to support lessons on sorting algorithms, binary search trees, red-black trees, heaps, sets, and hash tables, including cuckoo hashing and bloom filters. Two original decks of cards have been designed and tested that can form the basis for interactive classroom games and collaborative peer exercises in CS2. The Acorns deck consists of 70 cards, numbered with integers from 00-69. The leaves on these cards incorporate visual cues to reinforce proper sorting through a progression from green to red as the numbers increase. The Menagerie deck facilitates hashed data structures. This deck consists of 110 cards. 64 of these cards display an animal, along with two integers that are the result of passing the name through two simple hash functions, Murmur3 and FNV, modulo 8. Additional cards are numbered 0 to 7, to be used as markers for arrays within various hash table implementations. Twenty-six circular chits are also available, red on one side, black on the other, labeled with each letter of the alphabet. Students can use these cards to physically manipulate data according to algorithms. Classroom teachers can use these cards in interactive demonstrations, either physically for small classes or virtually for larger audiences. The CS2Mulch decks, along with lesson plans and supporting materials, are available at https://mgoadric.github.io/cs2mulch/, by PDF download, purchase, or virtually.