1. Offer Proper Courses
2. Offer Capstone Course
3. Divide the Students into
Groups
4. Talk to your IT Director
for Live Projects
5. Invite IT People to the
Class
6. Assign Projects to each
Group
7. Assign roles to each
member of each group
8. Designate a Project
Manager for all Projects
9. Set a deadline and a
Offer Proper Classes
For students to be able to do the entire SDLC (System
Development Life Cycle), we need to offer all the necessary course such as:
Systems and Procedures (CPT-264)
Programming Logic and Design – C++ (CPT-168) Microsoft Access Database (CPT-242)
Introduction to Web Page Production (IST-222)
Event-Driven Programming – C# (CPT-185) Data Structures – Advanced Access (CPT-244) SQL-Programming (CPT-202)
Advanced Even-Driven Programming – V.B. (CPT-206) Mobile App Development (CPT-188)
Professional Practices in Information Tech (CPT-118)
Offer Capstone Course
Computer Technology Senior Project (CPT-275)
Capstone course should be offered the last semester of the second year. It is recommended that the students should pass all the prior mentioned courses before taking this class.
The prerequisite for this course should be CPT-202 (SQL-Programming) and CPT-206 (Advanced Event-Driven Programming V.B.), since the other two major courses (Access database and C#) are prerequisite for these two courses.
Divide the Students into Groups
Before you talk to the IT department, you need to know how many projects you need. In order to find out, you need to get your roster and divide the students into groups of at least two and at the most four students.
You have to know most of your students to make sure each group will have a strong coder and a strong database student.
There would be no homework, no quizzes, no tests, and no lab
assignments. Only the live project. The students must be dedicated to spend the time to design and develop the project and deliver the final product by the due date.
Talk to your IT Director for
Live Projects
Make sure to make an appointment with your IT department at least a week before the start of classes. You have to discuss each projects with IT Director to make sure its not too easy or too complicated. It has to be a right project for students to be able to do it in a semester of 10 or 15 weeks.
The request for any software and application systems from any department would be sent to the IT department. The IT department would be the source of any and all projects.
You don’t want to get any projects directly from another department
without IT’s permission, since the IT department needs to approve the process and would be involved for installation.
If any department asks for a project, you can talk to them about it to see if its doable, but they have to send the request to the IT department.
Invite IT and End-User People to
the Class
On the first day of the class, make sure to have all the IT members who are involved with the project and all the end-users attend the class session to discuss all the projects and the details and get students familiar with each project.
Make sure students will ask all the possible questions they may have and knowing who their contacts are.
Analyze the different solutions and make sure the IT department specifies what kind of database they prefer and whether they want the application to be Web-Based or not.
Assign Projects to each Group
At this point after IT staff and end-users leave, or during the next class meeting, you have to assign projects to each group based on the group expertise or individual members in the groups’ specialties.
Make sure the students know who the end-users are and have all their information such as phone numbers and emails, so they would able to contact them to set up times for interview to collect information regarding their projects.
Make sure the students are aware of their contacts at the IT department such as DBA and any other experts who are willing to help are designated by the IT Director to help these students.
Assign roles to each member
of each group
Based on the students strengths, you have to assign a title to each member of each group. This would make students realize that they are acting as close to the “Real World’ as possible. You should assign the most dedicated student as a Project Manager for all groups. This student reports to you (The instructor).
The titles would be as follows: Project Manger
Team Lead
Lead Programmer Lead Database Admin Systems Analyst
End-User Coordinator Programmer/Database
Designate a Project Manager
for all Projects
You should assign the most dedicated student as a Project Manager for all groups. This student reports to you (The instructor).
So, do you need to know your students? Yes, but if you don’t you have
to ask other instructors to see who would be the best candidate for this important role.
This student, as the “Project Manager” of all projects, would have to
stay in touch with each team lead and send you a weekly report or talk to you in person once a week about their progress.
You have to make sure they are right on schedule and take care of any problems that may occur.
Presentation day
The presentation day should be the last day of the class right before the final exam week. Most people would not be able to show up on the final exam week to see the students presentation.
Send an email invitation to all those who are directly or indirectly involved with these projects.
Send an email invitation to the President, Vice Presidents, Deans, and all the faculty of your department.
Make sure the students understand they need to follow the dress code for their presentation.
Make sure the students have their name tags on.
Make sure the students have done several rehearsals to ensure they are ready.
Make sure the students are done with their projects and there are no bugs in their programs or databases.
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