A programming project based on social networking
Our second-year Database Concepts students recently wrapped up their group projects in the course I co-lecture with subject coordinator Sherah Kurnia. Every year we assign students a semester-long project to design and build a data-driven website. This year we asked the twenty groups of five students to build a social networking site (SNS).
In our final lecture last week, we asked students to fill in a survey about the project. All those present responded, which is good in a week in which students are constantly asked to fill in surveys about their courses. Their responses were mostly very positive, and the students’ work was mostly excellent, so we consider the project a success. However SNS are a fairly new phenomenon – making this arguably a cutting-edge” undergrad projects – and not everything went the way we expected. In this post I’ll describe the thinking that went into our choice of project, and the decisions and changes of direction that happened along the way. Using the survey results, I’ll test which of our expectations panned out. If I get time I hope later to polish this up for a conference – perhaps this year’s Ascilite.