Annual Report 2010 - Fachgruppe Informatik an der RWTH Aachen ...

Software Engineering Research Camp
The Software Engineering Research Camp provides computer science students the
opportunity to experience agile software development at first hand, and to learn about new
and emerging technologies. For a fixed period of time, the students organize themselves in
order to brainstorm about their own ideas, and then plan, design, and implement their own
applications. During all phases, the students are extensively supported by members of the
academic staff of the organizing chairs. The Research Camp is founded and organized by the
Software Engineering chair (I3) in cooperation with the Research Group Software
Construction (LuFGI3). The two iterations of the Research Camp so far were attended by 35
students.
In 2009, the Research Camp was scheduled for two days. The
students were invited to a hotel in the Eifel, where they designed and
implemented an application to manage the results of table football
matches. This first iteration of the Research Camp received positive
feedback by all participants and organizers. As expected, the twoday
timeframe was way too short to implement a functional
prototype. Nevertheless, the students gained insight into a software
project with about 25 members, and experienced typical
development problems like time pressure, communication overhead
or social conflicts within a group. In addition they experienced a
crash course in technologies like Android and J2EE. As a result, the
concept was further refined for the next iteration of the camp in
2010.
SECamp 2009
In 2010, the time-frame for the Research Camp was extended to ten days. In contrast to 2009,
the Camp started with a technology day at the chair of Software Engineering. The students
were introduced to the employed technologies Android, iPad, Web Services and J2EE. After
this half-day workshop, the students spent two days in a hotel in the Eifel in order to develop
their own ideas. During the course of several brainstorming sessions they decided to build
mobile Android and iPad applications that allow students and visitors to find and navigate to
the rooms of the computer science building more easily. In order to implement these
applications, the students decided to build on a stationary prototype for room navigation,
called GISELA, which was developed at a prior computer science lab class. After a week of
implementation, the students presented their application prototypes, and some of the students
announced their plan to continue developing in order to establish a real product.
SE Camp participants 2010
18