Engagement and Sustainability in a Data Structures Course in C for Non-Specialists

This paper is an experience report that deals with engagement and sustainability in a data structures course in C for non-specialists. The course is offered annually to about 200 engineering students who are not in the computer engineering option. We describe and justify a variety of engaging and sustainable practices, and provide benefits and caveats from the lessons we learned. These may be useful to instructors who are interested in either creating such a course or using some of its practices, while trying to achieve both high engagement and high sustainability when teaching non-specialists.