As the number of jobs in which shared rather than individual work continues to grow, we are being forced to re-examine the way people work. This proposal suggests that in today's work- place, computer scientists must be adept at both technical as well as communication skills. It also suggests that we, as educators, must be prepared to teach our students how to work in collaborative environments that improve programmer productivity. Towards this end, we propose to use an existing computer-supported cooperative problem solving environment to teach undergraduate computer science students to elicit software requirements. We believe that requirements elicitation and cooperative skills are highly interrelated and, as such, can be taught more effectively through the use of a computer-supported cooperative environment. By doing this, we will be able to expand the problem solving skills of our students and, thus, release into the computer science community more effective programmers. The environment will encourage cooperative work, and yet provide instructors with the ability to monitor individual as well as group performance. Through this system, students will be able to learn requirements elicitation techniques and, at the same time, gain valuable experience in working together on large team projects.
