At the number of jobs in which shared rather than individual work continues to grow, the way people work must be re- examined. This proposal suggests that in today's workplace, computer scientists must be adept at both technical as well as communication skills. Educators must prepare students to work in the collaborative environments found in today's industry. The individual programmer is rapidly becoming extinct. This proposal is to adapt an existing computer-supported cooperative problem solving environment and use it in software development courses. By doing this, the problem solving skills of students will be expanded and thus release into the computer science community graduates who are more effective programmers. The environment will encourage cooperative work and yet provide instructors with some ability to monitor individual as well as group performance. This proposal is to network the requested machines, configure them with the cooperative problem solving environment, and dedicate them to this project. With a student machine ratio of 3.5, students will be able to learn software engineering techniques and, at the same time, gain valuable experience in working together on large team projects.
