Take a look at the new version of this page: [ beta version ]. Tell us what you think.

ABSTRACT

Recent curricular recommendations (e.g., [7,9]) encourage the early and regular use of significant group projects in the introductory computer science sequence. In this paper, we report on a group project that we used in two courses during the second half of the semester. Rather than having each group work on the same project (or even individual projects), the groups build parts of a larger project: a distributed auction system to be used by art shows at conventions. Students reacted quite positively to the experience, in spite of reporting that they spent upwards of twenty hours on the project in many weeks. Students also learned important software design principles from experience.

REFERENCES

• 1: Catherine C. Bareiss, A semester project for CS1, Proceedings of the twenty-seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, p.310-314, February 15-17, 1996, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
• 2: Cyclic Software (1999). Concurrent Versions System (CVS).Online. Internet. {Accessed 20 October 1 9 9 9 .} A v a i l a b l e WWW: http://www.cyclic.com/cyclic-pages/CVS-sheet.html.
• 3: Adair Dingle, The object-ownership model: a case study for inheritance and operator overloading, Proceedings of the twenty-eighth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, p.82-86, February 27-March 01, 1997, San Jose, California, United States
• 4: Michael Godfrey , Dan Grossman, JDuck: building a software engineering tool in Java as a CS2 project, The proceedings of the thirtieth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, p.48-52, March 24-28, 1999, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
• 5: Adele Goldberg, What should we teach?, Addendum to the proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications (Addendum), p.30-37, October 15-19, 1995, Austin, Texas, United States
• 6: McConnell, J, Activity Type Descriptions. Online. Internet. {Accessed 20 October 1999.} Available WWW: http://wwwcs.canisius.edu/-mcconnel/type_descriptions.htmi.
• 7: Allen B. Tucker , Bruce H. Barnes , Robert M. Aiken , Keith Barker , Kim B. Bruce , J. Thomas Cain , Susan E. Conry , Gerald L. Engel , Richard G. Epstein , Doris K. Lidtke , Michael C. Mulder , Jean B. Rogers , Eugene H. Spafford , A. Joe Turner, Computing curricula 1991: Report of the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Curriculum Task Force, ACM Press, New York, NY, 1991
• 8: Joseph A. Turner , Joseph L. Zachary, Using course-long programming projects in CS2, The proceedings of the thirtieth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, p.43-47, March 24-28, 1999, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
• 9: Henry M. Walker , G. Michael Schneider, A revised model curriculum for a liberal arts degree in computer science, Communications of the ACM, v.39 n.12, p.85-95, Dec. 1996 [doi>10.1145/240483.240502]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Curriculum

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Computer science education

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Management, Performance, Theory