Assessment Tool

Lecture 17: Structures

Content Tested: Applications of Structures

Lecture Content:

Data Structures
Heterogeneous structures
Type definitions
Field selection
Structs as parameters

Goals:

Develop ability to apply principles and generalizations already learned to new problems and situations
Learn concepts and theories
Develop capacity to think for oneself

Assessment Technique: Application Cards

Purpose:

Instructors can find out how well students understand possible applications of structures and defining new types.

Activity:

In today's lecture we saw how to define a new type using a struct. Please give examples of applications that might use structs. After giving the examples, please write the C code for defining structures of these types.

Here are two examples:

A complex number type containing a real part and an imaginary part.

typedef struct {
    double real;     /* real part */
    double imag;     /* imaginary part */
} complex_t;         /* One convention is to name new types with name_t */

A student record type containing an ID, a grade point average, and year in school.

typedef struct {
    int id;          /* id number unique for each student */
    double gpa;      /* grade point average */
    int year;        /* year in school (1 = freshman, 2 = sophomore,
                        3 = junior, 4 = senior, 5 = other */
} student_t;

Possible Uses of Activity:

Have students write applications individually and submit these to the instructor anonymously. The instructor reads the applications and the class discusses possible larger applications or functions that might use these data structures.
Each student writes an application and explains their application to the rest of the class.
Break students into small groups (2-4 people) and have each group find five or more applications. Have each group explain their applications to the rest of the class.