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A Safe Opportunity for Practical Learning

Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008

 

Imagine, if you will, that you’re sixteen years old again. Your freshly-minted driver’s license is in your pocket. It’s proof that you completed the requisite student driver education and passed the driver examination flawlessly. Your textbook and your instructor covered the theory of driving thoroughly. So thoroughly, in fact, that there really was no need for the practical experience of driving a car. You demonstrated your mastery of the theory so well that there also was no practical driving portion of the examination. After all, in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, and you can correctly describe the procedure for a three-point turn with the best of them! So now it’s time to hop in your car and pull into rush-hour traffic.

Of course the reality is that no practitioner-oriented education, regardless of the discipline, would be complete without figuratively placing students behind the wheel. Such is the case with the AFIT School of System and Logistics’ Software Professional Development Program. While most of the SPDP courses are offered two or three times per year through instructor-led distance learning, CSE 496 Software Engineering Practicum is offered in residence at least once per year. Over three weeks, the students have the opportunity to develop or enhance a software application in an environment where it’s safe to make mistakes and learn from them.

The faculty try to give the software project every chance to run smoothly; they do not deliberately inject stumbling blocks. And yet stumbling blocks appear of their own accord. For example, one year the students were presented with a boxed board game and told their task was to create a computerized version of the game. Despite having the official rulebook on-hand, the students still needed several requirements clarified as software development progressed. Even greater opportunity for the unexpected is present when the CSE 496 project is less well-defined and may produce a product of use to the school--that is to say, a project that more closely resembles the sort of project students will encounter on the job.

Such was the case with the most recent offering of CSE 496. The students were tasked with developing software that would pull data from the school’s databases to generate quad-charts in support of planned and impromptu curriculum reviews. The students had access to samples of quad-charts for each of the school’s different types of course, and they had access to the school’s course managers (who were understandably excited about the prospect of this piece of drudgery being automated). And so the students began work on the Quad Chart Support System.

The literature on practicum courses in computer science education is replete with discussion of the tension between delivering a product to sponsors and letting students learn from the experience. CSE 496 is no exception. At the end of the three weeks, QCSS wasn’t a viable product. The students encountered obstacles that simply took time, such as comprehending the myriad databases, and obstacles that were outside their control, such as gaining access to the databases requiring more time than the faculty had anticipated.

Even though QCSS didn’t deliver a fully-functional software product, the practicum was a great success. Once again, CSE 496 afforded students an opportunity to learn practical aspects of software engineering in a safe environment. And did they learn! Throughout the three weeks, and especially during their self-critique at the close of the course, they reported taking design directions only to find out much later that they wouldn’t work. They also discovered that some techniques worked remarkably well. And they cited many pitfalls that they’ll forever be wary of, thereby avoiding such a learning experience on an Air Force weapon system. As a bonus, QCSS software engineering work started by these students is such that a future CSE 496 class will be able to continue their efforts and produce a system that will relieve the school’s course managers of tedious manual data aggregation. All in all, these CSE 496 results affirm our philosophy in SPDP that we should continue to place students “behind the wheel.”

 

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