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The use of real life projects in students’ assignments Some subjective impressions after several years of experience

The use of real life projects in students’ assignments Some subjective impressions after several years of experience. Boris Milašinović Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing , University of Zagreb, Croatia. Where and why use real life projects ?. Themes for Seminars

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The use of real life projects in students’ assignments Some subjective impressions after several years of experience

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  1. The use of real life projects in students’ assignmentsSome subjective impressions after several years of experience Boris Milašinović FacultyofElectricalEngineeringandComputing, Universityof Zagreb, Croatia

  2. Where and why use real life projects? • Themes for • Seminars • Obligatory students’ projects • Degree thesis • Projects for course Development of Software Applications • Could be beneficial for all participants • Better simulate students’ future jobs • More interesting than hypothetical problems • Stepping stone for future research and business projects

  3. Many questions to be answered • To whom to assign a theme? • Assign a theme to an average student now or save the theme for a better one coming next month, semester, year, … • Is there a project of appropriate size? • The purpose and duration of the student’s task/work? • Different for seminar, thesis, course, … • Working alone or in a team? • Cohesion of the team? • Work duration uniformity? • Continuity? • Could themes for a seminar, a student’s project and a degree thesis be the similar? • Type of supervision?

  4. Environment preparation • Opposite approaches • Student should use/experiment with new technology but final product must be fully integrated in the existing one • Students work must be isolated • No much dependency on development in progress • Hide private and valuable data and existing code

  5. Development problems • Problems during development time • Lack of work ethic - different priorities (job, other courses, private issues…) • Team problems • Lack of previous knowledge and lack of time • Limited course duration • Limited time to work on seminars and thesis • Fade of interest as problems arise • Need for increased supervision

  6. Work with real users or emulate them? • No one knows problem better than a real user • How much is he/she interested? • No free lunch • Might have too big expectations • Disappointment and waste of time in case of failure? • How good can we impersonate user? • Two notable traps – both not usual in real life • Tendency to summarize and clearly express requirements in form suitable to analyst/developer • Intentionally making too much mistakes/misleadings

  7. Product Value/Price and Maintenance • What is the value of the project? • How students’ work is valued? • Formally it is free, but is the value of product equal to €0 ? • User time • Mentor/assistants/department additional time • Whatafter project has been done? • Integration with other components • Code quality, maintenance and responsibility • Future development

  8. The most notable examples (1) • FCD - Flora Croatica Database (http://hirc.botanic.hr/fcd) • Plants Taxonomy & Bibliography of Croatian Flora • Taxonomy, gallery, habitats, herbaria, observations, endangered species, distribution maps, spatial analysis … • Started as a business project cca 10 years ago and found its usage in teaching in the last few years • Used as a project for Development of Software Applications course in year 2010 • Playground for test of new technologies • Several degree thesis • Some minor parts integrated in FCD almost as-is • Some parts prototyped by students - Indented to be a fully working version but had significant flaws in implementation or there were too much work on integration • Some students’ work had to be thrown away  - Poor design, never finished, incorrect specification, delivered too late (model changed in the meantime)

  9. The most notable examples (2) • WLO (Wild Life Observer) • Wolf tracking and prediction of movement • Initially started as a PocketPC application for field observations support using triangulation and GIS. • Started as a students’ project assignment and spawned into • Business project (handled independently by students) • Project for Microsoft Imagine Cup competition (2nd place in Croatia) • Theme for doctoral thesis • Project for Development of Software Applications course in year 2011 • CROdolphin (Marine mammal monitoring system) • http://crodolphin.vef.hr/crodolphin/ • Done as a degree thesis • Appliance of department’s own framework based on CSLA

  10. Conclusion • Great way for students to increase their experience and increase interest but students have to be chosen carefully • Use real users if success is foreseeable • Include students in existing project under supervision of experienced team members • If working alonestudents should be used to make prototypes - except in rare cases • Excellent playground for a test of new technologies • Can these subjective impressions can be replaced with objective facts? • Some things can be measured: time spent by project participants, number of users, amount of collected data, number of successful test passed, … • How can we measure pleasure, pride, experience, frustration, … ? • Rather philosophical question than exact scientific discipline

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