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Project Goals

 

Project Scope, Description and Significance

The project includes the following goals:

Introduction

The Science of Design as it relates to software and software intensive systems is a new area of inquiry with little existing theory or foundation. Therefore, an important contribution of this educational and research project will be our creation of a community of individuals from diverse disciplinary and cultural perspectives to begin establishing such a foundation. We will focus our specific efforts on the creation of an undergraduate level, curricular toolkit which is introduced through curriculum developed and evaluated as a fundamental component of the research described herein.

An interdisciplinary group of faculty at HSU is combining their efforts to build a foundation to teach design from different perspectives. They will collaborate with a wide range of faculty providing research experience for undergraduates, teaching computer science courses and other disciplines to build a community for a lasting impact to benefit the advancement of design research and education.

Project goals

We articulate four goals that will contribute to bringing together an interdisciplinary community to generate new directions and perspectives for teaching design.

Goal 1 : Build an interdisciplinary and diverse community of faculty and students around the design of Software Intensive Systems.

Our initial step will bring together a broad range of individuals with background and experience in design concepts. The core group, located at Humboldt State University will include individuals from disciplines ranging from computer science, engineering and natural resource sciences to business, social psychology and music to ensure a variety of perspectives and approaches. This group will also include undergraduate computer science students as well as graduate students from related fields of study. We will expand this community of collaborators to include NSF REU program mentors and other University faculty from university computer science programs.

This interdisciplinary and diverse community will collaborate to develop a creative curriculum to contribute to the SoD. This community will be built incrementally throughout various stages of the project, using diverse means including, but not limited to, weekly meetings, workshops, curriculum implementation and testing, curriculum assessment, curriculum revision and project evaluation.

Goal 2: Build a foundation for teaching the science of design to undergraduate computer science students and faculty.

We will initiate a creative process to build a foundation for the SoD by generating new perspectives and educational materials for teaching design to undergraduate computer science students as well as to computer science faculty. Even if we cannot anticipate all aspects of the creative process our team will undertake, we have identified elements from the fields of engineering, music, social psychology and business, among others that will inform our discussion.

The core HSU group will hold weekly meetings during the fall of 2006 to begin the definition of hypotheses to consider the development of new directions of the SoD as well as the essential curricular components for teaching creativity and conceptual representation considering their different areas of expertise from which they can draw. Additional input will be drawn from faculty participating via REU programs and workshops held through this process.

Using these as a starting point, the community will identify, critically assess and modify curricular elements and design concepts. Our primary focus is the design of a preliminary curriculum for the SoD with particular emphasis on creativity and conceptual representation.

Goal 3: Immerse students into a five week module in methods of creativity and conceptual representation at NSF REU sites and other campuses.

The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program is an NSF initiative to encourage active undergraduate involvement in research. The REU currently in progress at Humboldt State University provides an excellent opportunity to integrate and test SoD curriculum developed in this process with future REU student cohorts. Given HSU’s particular focus on the involvement of students from underrepresented groups, we will also benefit from the involvement of a broad range of cultural and social perspectives than typically represented in the current HSU student population.

Three additional REU sites with software design/engineering emphasis (California Earthquake Center University of Southern California, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Auburn University) have agreed to participate in the implementation of CCR toolkit curricular materials as one means of broadening the diversity of individuals and programs involved in the evaluative process.

The role of the REU involvement will be to test initial concepts and methods for teaching components of the SoD curriculum developed in the first phase of the project. Experiences with the summer 2007 REU program will directly inform modifications or adjustments necessary in preparation for the academic semester SoD offering in Fall 2007.

Goal 4: Conduct formative assessment of impact of the SoD new curriculum.

Throughout the entire process of curricular development we will be conducting formative evaluations. These will include evaluations at the conclusion of each iteration of the course presentation (REU, undergraduate SoD course module, and faculty workshops). These evaluations will be used by the local and external community team members as curricular elements are added, revised or removed from the design toolkit at the conclusion of each iteration.

We will generate technical reports and peer-reviewed publications based on the findings of these evaluations as they relate to the effect of a formalized SoD curriculum on the outcome of software design projects.

Because our own process in this project requires a tremendous amount of design, we believe it will be extremely valuable to document, analyze and understand how we go about accomplishing these tasks. Of particular interest will be the approaches used in bringing together the diverse team of local, national and international participants to define and develop a foundation for the SoD and a curriculum to teach concepts and tools for CCR in design of software intensive systems.

Additionally, we will learn about our own creative process thus further informing our research into CCR. As co-PIs we will be in the dual role of participant and researcher. Understanding our own roles, and the roles of others in the creative process, will allow us to review and, where appropriate, incorporate valuable lessons and insights into the SoD process and curriculum.

The results of the project will include the following three outcomes: