0.2.1. Status Report¶

This status report was last updated on March 9, 2020.

OpenDSA content contintues to grow, evolve, become more polished, break, get fixed, and so on. In general, specific chapters get periodic attention and slowly improve. At the present time, the chapters that are used in the CS2 and CS3 standard books are considered complete (though polishing and minor additions are continually being made), and they are actively maintained. These comprise a complete Junior-level data structures and algorithms course, and the data structures component of a standard CS2 course. If you are looking at the “Everything” book, you will see these as well as all modules that are in various stages of perparation. There you will also see the “TODO” list items.

We are constantly expanding our content. We have a fairly complete book on Formal Languages and Automata, which includes a collection of editors, simulators, and autograded exercises for building a variety of finite automata, including Turing Machines. There is a book for a course on programming languages (of the translators and parsing variety). There is a fairly complete chapter on NP Completeness theory. New for 2020: We are developing a tutorial on Blockchain technologies.

As of 2017, OpenDSA uses the LTI protocol to serve content, and directly integrates with the Canvas LMS. We have incomplete integration support for other LMS’s that support LTI, including Moodle and Blackboard. At this time there is no ETA on improved connections to any LMS aside from Canvas. However, we do provide the option to load individual visualizations, exercises, and modules into any LTI-compilant LMS. Details can be found at https://opendsa-server.cs.vt.edu/home/guide. Technical discussion of how OpenDSA supports LTI can be found at http://splice.cs.vt.edu/lti.