by Beth Keithly
A central source of shared course materials and tools for software engineering education, the Shared Software Infrastructure (SSI) Hub will move from Texas A&M University to the University of Texas at Dallas in May.
For universities and colleges that may not otherwise have the manpower to keep up with the latest technology trends, the Hub allows the fast introduction of that technology into the curriculum. Hub membership and content are offered free of charge.
One reason the Hub has moved to UT Dallas is because the university has the resources to not only keep up with technology for its classes but to increase the Hub’s membership and its inventory of tools. UT Dallas was also chosen because the principal investigators of the project, Dr. W. Eric Wong and Dr. Dick Simmons of the Computer Science Department at UTD’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science, have a strong vision of what the Hub could become.
“Our scope will begin with software engineering and will move to include computer science and then to engineering,” Wong said. “But we have to go step-by-step and software engineering is first.”
Wong and Simmons received a one-year $170,000 grant from the Institute of Software Engineering Inc. in January to move the Hub and to start a promotional campaign to attract new members. IBM is contributing the hardware, software and funds for operating the Hub and developing content. IBM will also be in charge of maintenance, while UTD will provide some space in a server room and allow students to monitor the servers and work with technicians.
As part of the plans for growth, Wong and his team are seeking funding and solutions from other industry sponsors and government agencies such as the National Science Foundation.
“IBM, Intel, Avnet and Quantum Insight have all supported the SSI Hub by providing infrastructure for member universities to introduce open source and open standard advanced software solutions into classrooms,” Wong explained. “We will open it to solutions from all companies. And the solution is everything, not just the software or the tutorial. A professor can contact us and get the software, tutorials, course materials, licenses and anything else she or he would need immediately into the classroom. We want to narrow the scope between what is taught and what is available.”
There are several short-term and long-term goals for UTD when the Hub transition is complete. The first is to increase membership from fewer than 50 today to as many as 300 in the next three years, focusing on U.S. expansion in particular. Also on the agenda is the establishment of a student chapter of the Institute of Software Engineering at UT Dallas. And Wong hopes to see a progressive increase in download activities by students and faculty at member universities.
ISE and the Hub are both intended to improve consistency in software engineering education. The Hub is designed to improve the education of software engineers, while the ISE is focused on introducing training standards into the software engineering industry. There aren’t any licenses or certifications in software engineering today, but the ISE plans to change that.
UTD will host a biannual meeting of current and potential members this fall to showcase the Hub. The members will hear about some of the tools on the site and share ideas for using them in the classrooms. Wong says it is the word-of-mouth marketing of the Hub that is the most effective.
“If the Hub is successful, it will have a huge impact,” he said. “People will work together to educate students, and the effort will be more productive. Already having 40 members without much marketing shows the need for an effort like this.”
Eric Wong is an associate professor of computer science at UT Dallas. Dick Simmons is a research professor in computer science there.
