Marine Biology Simulation Case Study
The Marine Biology Simulation Case Study (MBSCS) is a program written in Java for use with the Advanced Placement Computer Science A and AB examinations. It serves as an example of object-oriented programming (OOP) embedded in a more complicated design project than most students have worked with before.
The case study is designed to allow the College Board to quickly test a students knowledge of OOP ideas such as inheritance and encapsulation as well as requiring students to understand how objects such "the environment", "the fish", and the simulation's control module interact with each other without having to develop the entire environment independently, which would be quite time consuming. The case study also gives all students taking the AP Computer Science exams with a common experience from which to draw additional test questions.
On each of the exams, at least one free-response question is derived from the case study.