The Entrepreneur’s Bootcamp:

A new model for teaching web/mobile development and software entrepreneurship

Tim HickeyPito Salas

Brandeis University

The Story•2008-2009 Financial Crisis, Admin

pressure to make better use of campus in Summer

•2009-2010 JBS program created offering exciting experiential summer semesters!

•CS goal: increase enrollment and excitement about CS

• Summer 2010: Web/Mobile JBS

JBS 2010•Web/Mobile Apps + Entrepreneurship

•3 co-requisite classes, 10 students(1 female)

•1 CIOs of startups, 4 SE at startups, 2 @ big companies (Amazon,Msoft),1 in school, 2 not in CS

JBS 2011•Mobile Apps and Game Design

•13 students (4 women)

•2-startup, 1-wikipedia, rest in school

JBS 2012Web/Mobile Apps + Social Networking11 students (4 female)1@googlerest in school

Program Objectives•Increase interest and excitement in CS

•Support student Entrepreneurship

•Develop superpowers:create any web/mobile app you can imagine

•Teach Software Engineering Best Practices

•Introduce Business Concepts for Startups

•Teach self-agency - Just in Time Learning

What’s new?

•Summer Camp model for CS students(M-F, 10am-4pm, 10 weeks + trips)

•Full semester credit (3 course, residence)

•Web and mobile architecture curriculum

•Students build team product in 10 weeks

•Co-taught with Professional Software Engineer/Entrepreneur

Weekly ScheduleJun/Jul - 10 weeks

3 class@40 hr each, 1 lab@120hr

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri

10-12CS153

aCS153

aCS153

bCS153

bLab

12-1 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch

1-2Speak

erCS154 CS154 CS154 Lab

2-4 DEMO Lab Lab Lab Labevenin

gHW HW HW HW HW

Program Structure 2012

•CS153aj: Web and Mobile App Dev.

•CS153bj: Social Networking

•CS154aj: JBS Incubator

•CEO/CTO lecture series M 12-2

•Product Showcase at end of course

CS153a: Web/Mobile Dev

•Ruby (guided self learning)

•Rails (Model/View/Controller)

•Object Relational Mapping (Active Record)

•Platform Independent Mobile (Cordova)

•Test Driven Development (RSpec, Capybara)

•Code Reuse (Ruby Gems, Rails Trails)

CS153b: Social Networking•Register/Login (security, features)

•Sharing/Friending (case studies)

•Logging/Analysis (methods)

•Recommender Systems (movie datasets)

•Peer Teaching with Just in time Learning(anonymity, privacy, libel, permissions, dynamic group formation, ...)

CS154: Incubator(Practices)

•Source Control Management (git, github)

•Web App Frameworks (Ruby on Rails)

•Platform as a Service (Heroku)

•Object-Relational Mapping (ActiveRecord)

•Test Drive Development (RSpec, Capybara)

•Multi-platform Mobile (Apache Cordova)

CS154 (practices)

•Static Webpage Design (HTML5, CSS2.3)

•Client-side Functionality (jQuery, AJAX)

•Client-server interaction (REST)

•Agile Development (Pivotal Tracker, ...)

•Crowdsourced dev. (Stack Overflow)

CS154 (Business topics)

•Lean Startup Methodology (MVPs)

•Customer Development (Early testing)

•Social Media Marketing (FB, Twitter, ...)

•Financing (Venture Capital, Angels, Crowds)

•Legal issues (Trademark, Corporation, LLC)

•Pitfalls in startups (vested ownership)

Assessment

•Classroom interaction (TA keeps count!)

•Daily Homework (Read or Code and Blog)

•Weekly Programming Projects (screenrec)

•Weekly Project Presentations (filmed)

•Final Product Showcase (80-100 audience)

•Separate rubrics for each of 3 classes

CS154: Products

•(Online Demo time!)

•2012 - Wikiwitness ,Volunteer Hours, Where’s My Lane, Spy Game

•2011 - Giraffe Adventure, Vogueable, HappyTracks

•2010 - Roommate Helper, CakeWalk, Definitious, Social Market

•2013 - ????

Initial Results/Outcomes•increased entrepreneurship among

alumni (anecdotal evidence only)

•“life-changing transformative experience”

•no major business success yet (but thats not the goal!)

•increased acceptance among CS faculty(two of three can count toward major)

Student feedback• JBS has made my career.  It also gave me the

confidence and knowledge on how to learn a new platform or language extremely fast and with the initiative to create lasting products -- female graduate working at a startup

• The JBS simulated the atmosphere of a startup and taught me skills and principles ranging from technical to entrepreneurial that would prove vital in any development role, and especially an agile Rails role -- male at startup

• Not the skills as much as the confidence that I can apply myself to learn anything.

Student feedback• Such a learning environment is rare in a

traditional academic setting. Learning in a small group of like-minded, passionate individuals allows for a more tightly knit community to form, which in turn gives students a greater opportunity to learn from their peers.

• I say, "I could make that" whenever I see a website.

• Many of the homework assignments involved directly applying what was learned in class to our incubator projects. This was a great way to solidify our new knowledge.

Controversy (lets talk!)

•JBS raises many concerns expressed by faculty, adminstrators, students and others

•The instructors and students believe it is a great educational experience.

•Lets talk! What are your insights? Could you (do you?) offer something like this at your institution?

Controversy (lets talk!)

•“They will learn this stuff after college” Why waste valuable college classes on vocational education?? They will learn all of this and more on the job anyway!

Controversy (lets talk!)

•“These aren’t real CS courses. ” These courses should be offered by Business school or Engineering program, not in Computer Science!!

Controversy (lets talk!)

•“These courses have too much overlap.” They cover parts of HCI, networks, database, security, graphics, algorithms, machine learning, distributed computing, ...

Controversy (lets talk!)

•This is too demanding on faculty and too expensive for the University!! It will be too hard to find faculty willing to teach in such a program for the amount of money the school will be willing to pay! (Currently $15K/course for 10 weeks for each of two instructors).

Controversy (lets talk!)

•“Why give 3 course credits??”That will crowd out real CS electives!!

Controversy (lets talk!)

•“Why would student’s give up their summer for such a demanding program??” They can get an internship and make money and have nights and weekends free, while picking up valuable work skills!

Controversy (lets talk!)

•“This is too expensive for students, its a social justice issue” They have to pay for an entire extra semester! Only the students from wealthy families will be able to pay for three semesters in one year. Financial aid will only cover two semesters a year too!

Controversy (lets talk!)

•“All colleges and universities must start offering this type of program to compete with MOOCs!”

Because of the rise of free, high quality public courses (EdX, Coursera, Udacity) and other online courses (Open Course Ware, etc.), we have to change the value proposition of CS departments to survive!

Thank you!

•The next decade will be an interesting one for Computer Science education and higher education in general!