Fostering Undergraduate Research through Mobile Development Course in PUIs

In this panel proposal, our goal in to share how to blend in fundamental research challenges of mobile computing area while appealing to undergraduate students' desire to learn the latest and most relevant tools and techniques to develop mobile applications. Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in computer science undergraduate research activities at colleges and universities nationwide. Incorporating a research component along with a sound academic foundation enables students to develop independent critical thinking skills along with oral and written communication skills. However, not every university has resources to conduct research, specially the non-R1 institutions. One approach to foster research in such institutions is to incorporate research problems and practices in upper level computer science courses. In this panel, we report our experience with incorporating research in an undergraduate level mobile app development course, which enabled to foster research culture in the department, allowed students build profile to get into graduate school and helped them to consider a research career. Our primary course goals were twofold: 1. teach students the basics of mobile app development with a team project that exposes them to industry level software development practices. 2. introduce students to the fundamental research challenges in mobile computing area and provide them with an opportunity to address some of those challenges in their project. The purpose of this session is to share, document and discuss an effort to address the need of incorporating research in a mobile development course which allows them to get a perspective of graduate research are done, within the parameters and limitations common to higher education. We also plan to share lessons learned by the instructors and identify promising directions for improvements.