CONTENT DOMAIN AND STRATEGY FOR TEACHING LINKED LIST IN PEDAGOGICALLY EFFECTIVE MANNER

Abstract

The objective of this study was to address the problem of effectively teaching linked list, which was a core topic of data structure course. For this purpose, a survey based methodology was adopted to define the content domain and a teaching strategy for this topic. Among the contributions of this research, firstly, the content domain of the topic was defined using a taxonomy comprising of sub categories that included structure of a linked list; implementation variants; persistence of a linked list; and advanced complex variants. Secondly, the relative importance of the sub-topics in the content domain was also defined by conducting a survey form teachers and students. It was observed that out of thirteen subtopics, only seven should be covered in the first course of data structure, while the rest of the six topics could be provided as optional reading material.