by Martin Wallace
Service Learning In The Fablab And CSE 3311: Object-Oriented Software Engineering
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[Note: This post was co-authored by Eric Olson, Jon Le and Martin Wallace]
In spring of 2017 Dr. Christoph Csallner reached out to the FabLab for projects that his CSE 3311: Object-Oriented Software Engineering students could assist with as real-world problems. Martin Wallace, Maker Literacies Librarian, and Katie Musick Peery, FabLab Director, provided Dr. Csallner the mission of the FabLab, an overview of the Maker Literacies Program, and a list of five modules currently being considered for improving the FabApp—an application created to help organize and manage day to day operations of the FabLab. The next day, Eric Olson, FabLab Technician, and Jon Le, FabLab Graduate Assistant and creator of the FabApp, presented a more detailed look into the history of FabApp, the application’s architecture, and the five proposed problem domains that students could choose from.
The following week, the project teams presented their project choices. Out of the six teams, three chose to work on FabApp problems. These three teams then presented a high level look at existing software that could provide solutions to the problem, the technical risks associated with developing this as a group, how they could manage those risks, and finally an overview on how they were going to create a solution to the problem. These presentations provided insight on how the individual teams understood their problem, and allowed the students to gain experience working in the type of client/developer framework that predominates the software industry.
Dr. Csallner found that the quality of outcome was greatly influenced by the amount of communication and the inclusivity the entire team had with their clients, in this case, Jon and Eric who provided guidance and clarification to the teams throughout the semester while they worked. In working with the teams, Jon and Eric found that inclusive team communication greatly impacts success. All teams worked diligently to provide solutions to the problems as they interpreted them, and the challenges encountered provided a great representation of real-world problems they would encounter post-graduation.
Out of the three FabApp-related projects, the ticketing system was chosen to be implemented into the upcoming version of FabApp. This project provides a robust and easy way for FabLab employees to report equipment and general FabLab issues native to the FabApp. It also provides for issue tracking over time, automatic notification of technician-level users, live display of machine repair states, and has severity level checks which interoperate with the OctoPuppet and JuiceBox access control features as well – if a reported ticket is past a certain severity level then the machine it concerns is blocked from usage to prevent accidents or further damage to the machine. Additionally, Abdul Mannan was later hired on as a new FabLab employee and is assisting with the systems integration of the new module in addition to normal FabLab student employee duties.
Rather than providing the confined, staged problems familiar from textbooks, open-ended problems such as these service learning projects leverage all aspects of the student’s education and require them to actively synthesize knowledge to provide effective solutions. They also showed a side benefit of raising student buy-in and involvement through the students’ knowledge that their projects had a real chance of being implemented.
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