Integrating large-scale group projects and software engineering approaches for early computer science courses

The utilization of large-scale group projects in early computer science courses has been readily accepted in academia. In these types of projects, students are given a specific portion of a large programming problem to design and develop. Ultimately, the consolidation of all of the independent student projects integrates to form the solution for the large-scale project. Although many studies report on the experience of executing a semester-long course of this nature, course experience at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, shows the benefits of embedding a large-scale project that comprises just a segment of the course (three to four weeks). The success of these types of courses requires an effective process for creating the specific large-scale project. In this paper, an effective process for large-scale group project course development is applied to the second computer science course at Georgetown University.