A student builds on his or her stockpile of knowledge with every class taken. Sorting through that knowledge gained and applying it to create something new is the ultimate goal of Informatics students.
It better be. They need it to graduate.
The senior capstone projects for the Class of 2015 were on display at the School of Informatics and Computing Undergraduate Showcase at the Indiana Memorial Union in early April, highlighting a wide array of ideas that ranged from medical devices to mobile applications. There was an application to help students find others with the same interests. There was another app that would help students find the nearest social events. There was a device to force users to get out of bed on time. Another app was designed to keep friends safe and in touch during a night out.
The key to all of the work was for students to stretch their boundaries and create a project that would bring together all they have learned in their four years in the School of Informatics and Computing. It also helps them prepare for life after college.
“This is a two-semester long project,” says Matt Hottell, a senior lecturer and Director of Serve IT who also is the leader of the Capstone course. “It is a project. We want them to plan. It’s the first time in their existence as students that they have to spend a semester planning for a project before they write a single line of code. In the real world, that’s what they’re going to do. They can’t just sit down and start writing code. The other nice thing is it brings together students from different backgrounds. Someone who is a designer can contribute just as much as someone who is a developer or a business analyst. It doesn’t matter. It takes all these different skillsets to pull off a project. We’re hoping they learn that.”
For instance, groups that were working on apps were forced to quickly learn how to code for iOS applications, and a number of teams found that part of the project challenging.
“Swift (the programming language used in iOS apps) seems harder than it really is, but you get used to it,” says Christian Biloy, who is a member of a team that developed an app called Who’s CoNext? to pair groups of people with common interests. “None of us were really familiar with that whole platform, but the biggest thing was we learned to collaborate with other team members.”
The projects also forced students to independently learn new skills in a way that mirrors the future.
“What it does is prepares them by saying, ‘In the real world, you’re not going to know everything you need to know,’ ” Hottell says. “You are learning that you have to learn a new skillset, and you have to pick it up in a short amount of time. Maybe you don’t have someone who is going to be holding your hand as you pick it up. It’s really saying that you got to this point by being taught, and you probably have a job already. However, we’re going to get you where you can learn any technology you need to because you’re going to learn how to learn on your own.”
Apps dominated the projects, but there were a handful of groups that created something more tangible. One group used the real-life experience of one of its members to create a notification system to aid patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
“I work at an assisted living home, and we have a notification system,” says Joe Mikiska. “I thought about how maybe we could improve on that.”
Mikiska’s group created a system that masquerades as a flower pot. When a patient has to take medication or perform a task at a regular time, the pot lights up, plays a melody, and the flowers in the pot spin to get a patient’s attention. After the patient presses a button on the device, an email is sent to a caregiver to report that the task has been acknowledged.
That kind of innovation is exactly what the capstone project is designed to encourage.
“It has to stretch them on some level, and you won’t find a single team that didn’t get stretched in some capacity,” Hottell says. “That’s what the capstone idea is. You have all these pillars, and you have to build something with it. Maybe you’re taking Human-Computer Interaction, so you understand about usability. You’re taking a design class in fine arts, so you know how to make something look good. They’ve had a couple semesters of programming, so they have a little bit of knowledge with that. Now they’re building something big enough that they need someone who takes each one of those pillars and applies that knowledge to the project.”
That ability to bring all of the knowledge gained over the years together proved to students that all the hard work in the School of Informatics and Computing had paid off by providing the kind of education that will help in their new careers.
“I like the project because you build up to it for four years – actually three years, then you do it – but you tie everything you’ve learned in Informatics together,” says Corbitt O’Connor, who helped develop an app for a local restaurant. “You go above and beyond what you’ve learned. You show you can learn more, and that turns a light on for everyone that when they get to their job, they’re not going to know everything, but they know how to find the answers. This gives you the idea that you can figure it out if you don’t know it. That pulls everything together for the school.”