For several years, the undergraduate software engineering course at Carnegie Mellon University has revolved around the specification, design and prototyping of an ambitious real system such as an E-mail to FAX interface and an interactive city directory system including building directories, maps and bus routing information. The process of organizing an entire class of some thirty students toward a single technical goal is itself one of the object lessons of the course. This ILI funding will assist in moving this course to a new level of excitement, by providing a notebook computer with a wireless network interface to be used by each student. Students will use the computers to organize their group project and work collaboratively on its implementation. The students will also implement their system on the network, opening the door to a limitless set of projects prototyping collaborative and personal productivity tools. Three main benefits are expected from this project. First, the students in the course will have a chance to work with technologies and applications that are at the cutting edge, but will soon be widespread. Second, for that very reason, software companies may be expected to take a keen interest in these projects, which will in effect be doing rapid prototyping of new kinds of products, and will be eager to interact with the students as clients and technical advisors for the course. Third, the experiences will help to pave the way for other institutions to start similar programs, introducing their students to emerging consumer information technology, as hardware costs drop and wireless portable systems become ubiquitous.
