CS456/556 Software Engineering

At Ohio University, we offer a project-based software engineering class (CS456/556) in the School of EECS. In this class, real-world clients are invited to bring real problems to the class in Week 1 or Week 2. Students form teams of four and spend the entire term developing a software solution while learning software engineering principles, techniques, and tools. In the past few years, CS456/556 students developed standalone systems, web-based systems, virtual world projects, iOS apps, and Android applications.

An Ohio University news story described a past CS456/556 project.

The class will make use of a private Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/cs456-556), and a Google Code project (http://code.google.com/p/cs456-556/) when open-source licenses are adopted.

In 2011 Spring Quarter, the class project will be an Android project. The final presentation and demonstration session is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, June 8, at 12:20 p.m.

(http://www.ohio.edu/registrar/info/spring2010-11/finals.htm#exams)

VITAL Lab students attend OCWiC

Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing (OCWiC) was held Feb. 18-19 at Mohican Resort, Perrysville, Ohio. Qing and Ying from VITAL Lab attended this wonderful event specifically for women in computing field. This 25-hour conference offered a lot of sessions, including keynote speeches from industry and academy, student presentations, a poster competition, and of course an amazing party. Qing and Ying got chance to listen to speeches addressed by Sharon Nunes (VP of Big Green Innovations in IBM), Casey Moran (CTO of GE) and Maria Klawe (President of Harvey Mudd College). Speakers talked about how women can perform better in study, work and research, as well as what efforts can be done to help women in computing. Tessa Cooper, a student from Ohio University, presented her research as a graduate student. Bonita Sharif, an Assistant Professor from Ohio University, presented her work as a faculty.

Peer reviews of writings

Writer's Workshop (http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/writersworkshop.html) is an effective mechanism for a group of writers to critique each other's writing, and improve writing skills together.  This can be done in an informal setting within a research group before a paper is submitted or published.

Even if the authors are in the room, refer to them in the third person to reduce sense of direct confrontation in heated discussions.  If the authors wish to participate in the discussion, they can choose to also use "the authors" to refer to themselves so that they appear less self-defensive.

Text chat shorthands

The list at http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php is probably too intimidating for people new to text chatting, but here are a few common ones that are frequented used.

• k=ok
• brb=be right back