Back story

In November '07, the computer science faculty distributed a survey to ascertain students' progress. Based on these responses, I created a Odyssey proposal for a summer program involving team software development. That has now been offered funding, to cover six students.

Project

This is a three-week, full-time program at Hendrix, during the period August 4 to August 22, the time just before school starts. During this three-week period, you'd work in a team of three to six students on a project of your collective design, in one of two categories:

• Educational: We'll solicit faculty for suggestions of small pieces of software that they'd like for their classes.

• Entertainment: You design and implement a simple computer game.

The goal will be to work on a small project and to produce a highly polished result, which is ready for distribution on-line as an open source project.

The exact nature of the project — that is, what the software developed will be — will be largely up to each team. There may also be some choice as far as team composition.

The project would use a nontraditional platform. Two ideas of platforms are Flash Player or a cellphone platform such as Google's Android SDK. (An alternative might be a gaming system, such as Nintendo DS or XBox 360. But I haven't been able to figure out the details of how we might be able to do this in a reasonably affordable (<$2K) way, and it's not clear we have the funding anyway.)

Odyssey credit

The program has been pre-approved for Odyssey PL credit (if you want it). To earn the PL credit, you will need to demonstrate a full effort to completing the project in an exemplary fashion, and you would also write a reflective paper of two or three pages about what you learned during the process and what you would do differently for such a software development process in the future.

Housing and food

The program will provide a small stipend ($840) to help cover costs associated with food and housing. There will be some group lunches and possibly dinners, sponsored by the project.

I believe Hendrix will not be able to provide campus housing for the three-week period.

The project will use our computing facilities for its offices. During the period, you'll be working a least 40 hours per week.

Prerequisites

Most and perhaps all participants will act as programmers. Programmers should have already completed at least CSCI 151 Foundations of Computer Science II and preferably CSCI 250 Programming Practicum.

There is some room for a designer. The designer would not do any programming, but should be able to demonstrate some form of artistic portfolio and be able to demonstrate an ability to discuss software interface design insightfully.

How to apply

Feel free to ask any questions of Dr. Burch about the project.

Apply by sending an e-mail to Dr. Burch. by 2pm, Wednesday, April 23. The application should simply describe why you are interested in the project, and it might mention experience that could be applicable; it need not be an extended e-mail.

From this group, I will select a set of applicants to interview. During this interview, I will consult you about the possible composition of your team.