The project is to develop a pilot, senior level course that uses a combination of methods proposed by the PI's to address 6 points of need in undergraduate Computer Science education that have arisen in several recent reports. These reports have dealt with the interaction of theory and practice as well as academia and industry within the context of Computer Science education and research. The eventual aim is to introduce the proposed methods into lower level CS courses. For this purpose, it is expected that the experience gained and problems encountered during the proposed project - involving the more controlled, but representative, senior-level student population at 3 institutions - would be crucial, if not indispensable. The course to be developed will be based entirely on case-studies. These are not artificially contrived or token exercises, but are to be obtained from raw case-study material collected (in consultation with industrial partners) from past and ongoing projects in industry. These case-studies are carefully chosen and designed (i) to expose students to a broad variety of large, prototypical, real-world projects, (ii) to apply, in a noncompartmentalized manner, a combination of formal and theoretical concepts, techniques and results in real situations, (iii) to illustrate recent theoretical research results in the context of a chain of applications leading to the solution of a real-world problem, and (iv) to involve the student in significant software implementation while being conscious of its role in the larger context of an industrial case-study project. The main results of the project will be twofold: (1) Industrial case-study material in a uniform format, usable also by schools with no industrial contacts, along with supplementary formal and conceptual material, teaching tips etc. (2) Pilot methodology to be used by schools who are interested in developing their own bank of case studies. These methodologies will be documented and also conveyed via a conference pape r, as well as a one day workshop, possibly at DIMACS.
