Kenneth L. Modesitt

International Software Engineering University Consortium (ISEUC): a glimpse into the future of university and industry collaboration

ISEUC is a consortium of universities and colleges around the world who will provide software engineering (SE) courses to students globally via distance learning, primarily using the asynchronous mode of the Internet. ISEUC members, currently numbering 35 from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA, already have established programs and/or degrees in software engineering. ISEUC serves as a broker for its members to provide additional students for existing and future Web-enabled courses, and is not a degree-granting organization. ISEUC will have both faculty and professional advisory boards. The primary markets are corporations that employ professionals trying to develop reliable, robust, and useful software products in a timely and efficient fashion, but who do not currently have state-of-the-art knowledge or skills. The paper gives a short description of why ISEUC has come into existence, what it looks like, results of personal visits, and what would be involved to become a member.

Workshop on Real-Projects for Real-Clients Courses (RPRCCs)

The purpose of this workshop is to begin the development of an evolving archive of materials to help faculty desiring to run Real-Projects for Real-Clients courses (RPRCC’s) to design such courses and to tailor them to their specific objectives and available resources. A major part of this archive will consist of materials already used in such courses, together with an explanation of which RPRCC-related issues each of the materials addresses as well as the various alternative approaches to addressing each issue.

A community of individuals: Cooperation and individualization in computer science education

Abstract A model of education based on cooperation among responsible individuals is presented. Earlier models are discussed which involve traditional competitive-based courses as well as the more recent individualized mode. The latter has been used by the author for several years, utilizing both a personalized system of instruction (PSI) and computer-based education (CBE). Now, however, cooperation has been introduced as an explicit and integral part of education. This was done in the belief that most serious problems of our day are amenable to a cooperative problem-solving process. The techniques utilized in an introductory computer science course include: study partners for PSI units, computerized personal data base design by a small group, mutual design and use of interactive programs, use of cooperative exercises (computer and otherwise) and parties. The future of these efforts remains unknown, but there is a strong belief that cooperation is a preferable model to competition in the world to come.

Software engineering masters programs- lessons learned

Nowadays most of the attention is on instantiating undergraduate programs in Software Engineering. Given that many of the master programs are well established, certainly there are lessons learned and advances in pragmatics of instruction that will be of help to new Undergraduate Programs. Furthermore variations of intent and organization of existing master programs provide numerous models of interest for undergraduate programs. And finally, the future of undergraduate education in Software Engineering cannot be fully discussed without an assessment of the trends among graduate programs, including what is going on at the Doctoral level. Lack of qualified teachers in numbers needed for a growing number of undergraduate programs is also a concern. The panel will focus on Master Level Curriculum Models and Pragmatics of Instruction in form of Lessons Learned in direct experience with Master Programs in Software Engineering and Software Engineering Management..

Experiences With an Open Systems Computing Laboratory

Open Systems are computing systems which are based on industry standards and nonproprietary multivendor components. As an increasing number of computing installations move away from single‐vendor proprietary architectures to more and more open architectures, academic institutions are increasingly faced with the responsibility of appropriately introducing open systems concepts into the undergraduate curricula. Using funding from the National Science Foundation, an open systems computing laboratory was recently set up at the University of Michigan‐Dearborn. The laboratory is based on the three most popular computing platforms today in the PC to Workstation range; namely IBM/PC, Macintosh, and Sun/UNIX. Supporting equipment include a postcript printer, a Novell network, a tape mass storage, and appropriate software and interfaces. A three credit‐hour course titled Open Systems Computing was offered in Summer 1995 to computer science and computer engineering majors. The course utilized the laboratory fully. T...

A community of individuals: cooperation and individualization in computer science education

A model of education based on cooperation among responsible individuals is presented. Earlier models are discussed which involve traditional competitive-based courses as well as the more recent individualized mode. The latter has been used by the author for several years, utilizing both a Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) and Computer-Based Education (CBE). Now, however, cooperation has been introduced as an explicit and integral part of education. This was done in the belief that most serious problems of our day are amenable to a cooperative problem-solving process. The techniques utilized in an introductory computer science course include: study partners for PSI units, computerized personal data base design by a small group, mutual design and use of interactive programs, use of cooperative exercises (computer and otherwise) and parties. The future of these efforts remains unknown, but there is a strong belief that cooperation is a preferable model to competition in the world to come.

Computer science at a university regional campus

Comparative study of languages for programming interactive use of computers in instruction. Within the last ten years, regional campuses for large state universities have significantly altere d the implementation of higher education. With the academic facilities located near population centers , there is a far broader spectrum of student opportunities. Whereas the main campus of many state universities dominates the surrounding town, regional campuses are usually far more integrated into the community. This point is important for students interested in computers. For potential employers, students, part-tim e employment, site visits, and varied computer applications are all located within a few miles of the university . The wide variety and depth of both educational experiences, those on and off campus, and participant s combine to make regional universities a most significant element in higher education throughout the mor e populated areas of the United States. Section II discusses the advantages which regional campuses offer to computer science. Section II I gives some additional educational advantages which can occur in such an environment. The summary section mentions a few disadvantages and compares a regional campus to a node in a particular type of compute r network. One of the most obvious advantages for computer science students is the ready availability o f computer time. Most regional campuses are primarily teaching oriented and have enrollments of less tha n 10,000. Consequently, the research and administrative requests for computer time are not very large percentages of the total requests when compared with such requests at the main campus. Each regional campus usually has a small computer, say an IBM 360/22, CDC 3300, or POP-11. Suc h a machine must be large enough to hande the majority (752) of the local jobs. Hence processors such a s FORTRAN, PL/1, BASIC, COBOL, and assemblers should be available. These small machines are relatively-21