Forum for Advancing Software engineering EducationForum for Advancing Software engineering Education
Volume 6 Number 15 July 11, 1996
Contents:
Industry/University Collaboration: A Case Study
CFP: Frontiers in Education
CFP: OOPSLA Workshop on teaching OO to Freshmen
SIGCSE 97 Call For Referees
CFP: 3rd Int'l Conference On Cleanroom SE Practices (IC-CSEP)
CFP: Sixth IFIP TC13 Conference On Human-Computer Interaction
CFP: 8th Conference on Software Engineering Environments
Subject: Industry/University Collaboration: A Case Study
INDUSTRY/UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION: FINDING PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT LEVEL
INTRODUCTION
At the recent SEI Software Engineering Education Working Group meeting in
Daytona Beach [SEEWG96], the group considered the issue of "Culture Change -
Industry/University Collaboration".
After a brief discussion, the working group team considering this issue
concluded that industry/university collaboration was a good thing. Thereafter,
it considered ways to make it happen more or better. It was assumed the
initiator of this collaboration would be the university (or alternative
education/training provider ). Several questions arose, one of which was:
How can the person in the university (or other education/training
providing organization) find the right person in industry to initiate
the collaboration (i.e., internship ,or joint project, or training course,
or on-site university course approval, etc.)
The question is very broad and difficult to answer. A short answer is:
it depends (on the nature of the collaboration sought, the particular
university/industry pair, the locations of the pair, the individuals
involved, etc.)
However, a best case for the question is easy to define. For example,
suppose that a Nobel Prize winning professor in a university seeks
collaboration with a local multi-billion dollar company for which the
CEO is a life-long friend of the professor, and for which the professor's
expertise is of fundamental importance to the success and profitability
of that company. For this case, the university professor simply contacts
the company CEO. A worst case is equally easy to define.
A good approach to answering the broader question might be to compile a
collection of narrow scope case studies with associated answers, and attempt
to generalize from this. In that spirit, I hereby submit a narrow scope case
study which could be a useful element in such a collection. The case
involves an academic course, a university, a city , and the industries in
that city. These elements are briefly discussed below, and then an answer
to the "right person" question is provided in that narrowed context.
COURSE
The course is called CS402, Senior Project and Professional Practice. In
it Computer Science seniors do software development projects for local
industry [KNO91]. It has been running with success for the last 16 years.
The projects are real projects done for real customers in a realistic
environment. Teams of 4-5 students do software developments from proposal
through sell-off in 14 weeks, and the real customer is a major determinant
of the team's grade. Software development costs are tracked because
student project leaders keep track of time cards for team members and
themselves.
More than 40 such projects have been completed, with a high success rate
(greater than 90% overall, with no failures in recent years). This course
needs industry/university collaboration because it requires a continuing
supply of good-quality real projects with their associated real customers.
UNIVERSITY
The university is the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). It is a land,
sea and space grant university with about 9400 students, 9% of them graduate
students. Its Computer Science program was started in 1980 and
CSAB-accredited in 1991. It has about 100 undergraduate (BS CS) students
and 20 graduate (MS CS) students. Of the latter, more than half are in a
Software Engineering track which was started in late 1993. CS students have
access to a wide range of computing resources, including a Cray Y-MP and
a T3D located at the campus-based Arctic Region Supercomputing Center.
FAIRBANKS
Fairbanks is located in Interior Alaska, about 350 miles north of Anchorage
Alaska and about 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle. There are roads
linking Fairbanks to points south, but for most practical purposes
Fairbanks is the end of the road for those traveling north by car.
Fairbanks is Alaska's second largest city, founded in 1902. An estimated
15% of the Fairbanks area population is military. In recent years Fairbanks
has experienced a small boom in summer
tourism. The city of Fairbanks proper has a population of about 34,000
people, while the greater Fairbanks area has a population of about 75,000.
INDUSTRY
According to the Alaska Almanac [SMI95], overall Alaska employment by
industry in 1994 was:
SECTOR %
- -------------------------------------------------------
1) Government (Military, DOI, FAA,etc.) 27
2) Services & Misc (including tourism, etc.) 22
3) Trade (e.g.,retail) 21
4) Transportation/Communications/Utilities 10
5) Manufacturing 6
6) Finance/Insurance/Real Estate 5
7) Construction 5
8) Mining (including oil % gas) 4
9) Agriculture/Forestry/Fishing/Other 1
FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON
- ------------------------
In summary UAF is a small university located in Fairbanks, Alaska, a
small, remote, northern city. Eighty percent of the Fairbanks local
industry consists of government, services, trade, and transportation/
communications/utilities activities. UAF seeks industry/university
collaboration in order to provide real projects and real customers for
the CS402 course, which is offered every Spring semester.
The original question, restated for this narrower context, is:
How can the UAF CS402 instructor find the right person(s) in Fairbanks
local industry for CS402 "real" projects ?
As was mentioned, CS402 has been offered annually for the last 16 years.
In early years, the right person was normally found by the course instructor
with a few telephone calls. This worked quite well, and was a natural
approach for a small community where "everybody knows everybody".
However, in recent years the right person(s) have been found mostly with
the aid of a media-based approach, which evolved as follows:
1) One Spring in the early 90's, the instructor decided to try for
some good public relations for UAF by collaborating with the UAF
Public Information Officer in the development of a Press Release.
The exact first release has been forgotten, but it reported something
like "A UAF student team has developed a scheduling program for the
North Pole Police Department. The students were... The Chief of Police
said... etc,etc." This UAF Press Release was sent to the local
newspaper (the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner), which was happy to print
the article as a piece of good local news (UAF and Fairbanks
community help each other, win-win situation, etc.).
2) The following January, the instructor decided to try a similar
mechanism to generate a new set of possible projects. This entailed
a Press Release stating that UAF was seeking proposals for medium sized
software development projects to be done without charge by student
teams. This Press Release was in effect a simplified Request For
Proposals (RFP). The person named as the UAF contact was the CS402
instructor.
3) Steps 1 and 2 have been repeated each year subsequently.
This media-based approach to be very successful in generating a fresh new
set of candidate real projects for CS402 each year. In fact, it is almost
too successful, because in recent years many more proposals are submitted
than can be accepted. This leads to the compulsory use of scarce class
time for proposal screening, and the need to disappoint quite a few
proposal hopefuls.
The media-based approach was used recently for the Spring 96 projects,
and a strange new thing happened. The Press Release (RFP) was sent out
as usual to the Fairbanks newspaper, which printed it as a public
service announcement in the back of the local section. However, it was
also picked up by the local TV station (which did a 10 minute segment on
the projects, interviews with the instructor, interviews with satisfied
customers, etc), and the local radio station. All this happened over
the space of two days. Within three days, 24 project proposals were
in hand as described below.
CS402 CANDIDATE PROJECTS 23 JAN 96
SPRING 1996
# NAME | ORGAN | DESCRIPTION OF SW APPLICATION
- -------------------------|------------|---------------------------------
1 LON KELLY ** | BLM | reservation system for BLM cabins
2 NETTIE LABELLE-HAMER | FAHA | ice scheduling for hockey league
3 PAMELA BUMSTED | FNA | design computer resource center
4 RUTH BAR SHALOM | HOLMED | invent prg for holistic medicine
5 MICHAEL ABELS | IAB | scheduler for IAB resources
6 TOM MCGRANE | KUAC | TV program scheduling-1
7 GREG RUFF | KUAC | TV program scheduling-2
8 TERRY REICHART | LOVE,INC | match needs w. comm resources
9 TOM DE PETER | NSFIRE | add inv tracker to present system
10 CINDY LINTEEN | PIONEERHME | pioneer home mgmnt system
11 SCOTT ALLEN | SE | truck mgmnt application
12 BRUCE LEE | SE | dog mushing management
13 ELMER LEZENKO | SE | investment management software
14 ROBERT FOX | SE | real estate application
15 RUTH THOMPSON | SE | creamer field management
16 KEN PHILIP | SE | mapping application for Mac
17 DONNA SCOTT | TANCH | employment serv for natives
18 DANA KENT | TANCH | serv for natives (food stmps)
19 BRENDA WILCOX ** | UAFALUM | Mac-based alumni db system
20 GORDON JARRELL ** | UAFMUS | integ sys for museum collections
21 DEBRA DAMRON ** | UAFPR | match std home addr w.lcl papers
22 EILEEN ARMSTRONG | USIBELLI | sourdough cabins sched system
23 SCOTT BELL | USKH | contact difficulties
24 JOBE CHAKUCHIN | YUKCH | analyze biological data
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES: ** = SELECTED
Four of the 24 projects were selected and executed to the satisfaction
of their customers. The other 20 applicants were sent gentle rejections.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
- -----------------------
The question of "how to find the right person" for industry/university
collaboration is too broad to admit an easy answer. One approach to
answering the broad question is to collect a number of answers from
narrow-scope case studies, and attempt to generalize. One such case study
is reported here, in which the desired area of collaboration is joint
software development projects to be done by student teams. For this
case, a media-based approach has been used sucessfuly to "find the right
persons".
Although this approach works well for a small university in a small remote
city, it might not work well in other environments.
REFERENCES
- ----------
[SEEWG96] Proceedings of the Working Group on Software Engineering
Education, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach,
Florida, 25-26 April 96
[KN091] "Medium Size Project Model: Variations on a Theme", P.Knoke,
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 536, J. Tomayko (Ed), 1991
SEI Conference on Software Engineering Education
[SMI95] "The Alaska Almanac: Facts About Alaska", 19th Edition, C. Smith
(ed), Alaska Northwest Books, Seattle, Washington 1995.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Many thanks to Pete Knoke for writing up this case study.
We would very much like to publish additional case studies of
collaborations. Please forward your experiences with industry/university
collaborations to Kathy Beckman, FASE Co-Editor, at: sdmce@access.digex.net.
Subject: CFP: Frontiers in Education
FASE readers: We have one panel arranged on SE education, but would welcome
papers or other panel etc. as described above. Please respond to me with
submission ideas.
Laurie Werth
Dept of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin
Taylor 2.124
Austin, TX 78712
lwerth@cs.utexas.edu
--- Forwarded mail from Stephen Seidman <seidman@Eng.Auburn.EDU>
For 25 years, the annual Frontiers in Education (FIE) conferences have
provided a forum for presenting research in engineering education.
These conferences were originally cosponsored by the IEEE Education
Society and the the Educational Research and Methods Division of the
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE-ERM).
In 1994, the IEEE Computer Society became a cosponsor of the FIE
conferences, with the hope that they could provide a similar forum for
presenting important educational issues and research results in computer
science and engineering.
The FIE program committee consists of three co-chairs, one from each of the
sponsoring societies. I am the Computer Society co-chair for FIE '97, which
will be held November 5-8, 1997, in Pittsburgh.
I would like the computer science and engineering portion of the FIE '97
program to consist of a number of topical sessions, workshops, and
panels.
Topics under consideration include:
- the core curriculum in computer science
breadth-based curricular approaches
nontraditional approaches to the first course
object-oriented introductory curricula
- software engineering education (both graduate and undergraduate)
- information systems education
- distance education
- ethics in the curriculum
- accreditation issues
- international issues
- evaluation and outcomes asssessment
- computer science and engineering at minority institutions
Sincerely,
Stephen B. Seidman
Department of Computer Science
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
(phone) 970-491-5862
(fax) 970-491-2466
(email) seidman@cs.colostate.edu
Subject: CFP: OOPSLA Workshop on teaching OO to Freshmen
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION --
Teaching and Learning Object Design in the First Academic Year
OOPSLA 96 Workshop, Sunday 6-Oct-96, San Jose California, USA
This workshop will involve presentations and intensive collaborative
sessions to investigate methodologies, tools, philosophies,
case studies, and assessment techniques that effectively support
teaching and learning object design in the first academic year.
Our goal is to investigate experience and ideas related to effective
early teaching and learning of object design. We hope to determine
useful guidelines for educators that better prepare students for
future courses and industry.
If you are interested in submitting a position paper, please go to
http://www.comp.vuw.ac.nz/Research/design1/call.html
where you'll find:
o The Call for Participation.
o The Suggested Position Paper Outline.
o The Original Workshop Proposal.
and a link to the OOPSLA 96 homepage. If you have questions, contact:
Rick Mercer -or- Robert Biddle
Penn State Berks Victoria University
Engineering and Computer Science Computer Science
Tulpehocken Road PO Box 600
Reading, PA 19610-6009 Wellington
USA New Zealand
610-320-4845 +64 4 471-5328
rhm1@psuvm.psu.edu robert@comp.vuw.ac.nz
Subject: SIGCSE 97 Call For Referees
The quality of papers at SIGCSE `97 depends on the willingness of
SIGCSE members and others to serve as referees. Referees receive
at most three papers for review. Papers will be sent shortly
after the September 4 submission deadline. Referee reports must
be RECEIVED no later than October 10, 1996. Please complete this
form and return it by August 1, 1996, to indicate your interest and
ability in serving as a referee for SIGCSE `97. You may reply
directly to this mail, or see below for fax and postal addresses.
(Some of you have already sent information, but please oblige us
with a response anyway - thanks.)
Carl Erickson or Bruce Klein, Program Co-chairs, SIGCSE `97
Computer Science and Information Systems Department
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401
fax 616.895.2106
- -------------- cut here --------------------
Name________________________________________________
Position____________________________________________
Address_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
Phone _________________ Fax _________________
E-mail___________________________
Check subject areas you are competent to referee:
___Algorithms
___Artificial Intelligence
___Computer Science Education Research
___CS1 and 2
___Computer Supported Cooperative Work
___Curriculum Issues
___Data Communications and Networks
___Data Structures
___Database Systems and Management
___Distance Education
___Ethical and Social Issues in Computing
___Formal Methods & Theory
___Gender Issues
___Graphics and Visualization
___Information Systems
___Instructional Software
___Laboratory Environments
___Multimedia
___Non-majors Courses
___Object-oriented Technology
___Operating Systems
___Parallel and Distributed Computing
___Programming Languages
___Security
___Software Engineering
___User Interfaces
___Web technology
___Other - specify______________________________________
Thank you.
Subject: CFP: 3rd Int'l Conference On Cleanroom SE Practices (IC-CSEP)
Conference Theme:
Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice: Experiences, Practices,
Innovations, and Case Studies in the Use of Cleanroom Concepts and Principles.
Conference Focus:
To facilitate the use of Cleanroom theory and concepts in practice. The
conference provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to
interact with one another, share ideas and experiences, and pursue common
goals in software development.
Deadlines for Paper Submission or Panel Proposal -- July 15, 1996.
For Further Information Contact:
General Chair: Shirley Becker
3rd IC-CSEP Q-Labs, Inc. USA,
College Park Professional Center,
Suite 305, 4511 Knox Rd,
College Park, MD 20740
phone:(301)864-1177
fax(301)864-0980
email: sbe@q-labs.com
Subject: CFP: Sixth IFIP TC13 Conference On Human-Computer Interaction
INTERACT97: SIXTH IFIP TC13 CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
Darling Harbour Convention Centre, Sydney, Australia
14 - 18 July, 1997
THEME: DISCOVERING NEW WORLDS OF HCI
Hosted by the Australian Computer Society
Incorporating OZCHI, the Australian Annual CHISIG Conference and
APCHI, the annual Asia-Pacific Conference on HCI
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
SUBMISSION DEADLINE DATES:
15th November, 1996
(or postmarked 1 November)
>>> Papers, Panels, Tutorials
17th January, 1997
(or postmarked 6th January)
>>> Workshops, Posters, Doctoral Consortium,
>>> Laboratory & Organisational Overviews,
>>> New Technologies, Videos, Interactive Experience
To obtain full information:
FILL IN THE FORM at the end of this announcement and SEND THE FORM to
INTERACT97 Conference Office at email: interact97@acs.org.au
Keep up to date by visiting the INTERACT97 Web pages at:
http://www.acs.org.au/interact97
AIMS
INTERACT97 brings together HCI researchers and practitioners in all fields
and disciplines, from diverse cultures and backgrounds, who are interested
in the interactions between people and computers; to share state-of-the-art
HCI knowledge and research advances in an international atmosphere; and to
gain fresh perspectives on the problems and opportunities of creating more
usable technology, systems and environments.
CONFERENCE TOPICS
Contributions which advance the theory or practice of any aspect of HCI are
welcomed. The review policy is to support diversity and focus on
international issues. Discussions that link between or expand the following
topics are particularly encouraged:
Applications:
including groupwork and groupware (CSCW, CSCL); consumer
products; offices; education; libraries; medicine; process
control; knowledge based systems; the arts and media; people
with special needs
Theoretical Issues:
task and user modelling; psychology of design; learning and
performance; interaction models
Interfaces, Tools and Architectures:
World Wide Web; multimedia; communications, hypertext;
hypermedia; portable user interfaces; design environments;
UIMS; new or emerging technologies
Development Issues:
formal methods; Scandinavian approaches; notations;
requirements and task analysis; prototyping; user participation;
participatory design;
programmer aids; metrics; dialogue design; graphics; standards
and guidelines; work practices; implementation and management
issues; social and political issues
Subject: CFP: 8th Conference on Software Engineering Environments
Cottbus, Germany, 8-9 April 1997
SEE'97 is the eighth in a series of major conference held on Software
Engineering Environments - the premier professional meeting in a European
location to review, discuss, debate and learn about the most recent practice
and research results in the field.
The goal of the conference is to bring together experts on software
engineering environments. Papers should contain new and significant results
pertaining to this topic. Papers that point out new directions are
particularly welcome. Tool presentations and demonstrations by authors
are explicitly solicited.
Submission deadline: October, 10th 1996
Detailled information about the conference is available from
http://www-sst.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~wwwsst/SEE97/
or contact
Prof. Dr. Juergen Ebert
Institut fuer Softwaretechnik
Universitaet Koblenz-Landau
Rheinau 1
D-56075 Koblenz
Tel. ++49-261-9119-412
Fax. ++49-261-9119-499
email ebert@informatik.uni-koblenz.de
FASE Volume 6 Number 15
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Laurie Werth -- Advisory Committee
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University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712 USA
Phone: 512-471-9535
Fax: 512-471-8885
Email: lwerth@cs.utexas.edu
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Software Engineering Institute
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