Revamping the Classroom

Teaching Mobile App Software Development Using Creative Inquiry

Roy P. Pargas

and Barbara J. Speziale

School of Computing, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, U.S.A.

Undergraduate Studies, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, U.S.A.

Keywords: App Development, Creative Inquiry, iOS, Android, Smartphone, Tablet.

Abstract: Teaching mobile device software development is challenging. Almost everything about it is different from

teaching a traditional software development class in which the target computer (on which the software

developed by the students is to run) is a laptop or desktop computer. In a mobile device software

development course, the target computer is a device (smartphone or tablet) that has a large number of

features (Internet access, camera, GPS, gyroscope, media display, etc.) accessible by software. The material

that must be covered in such as course is so broad that new approaches to delivering course content must be

used. This paper describes the overall method by which we teach such a course. We describe four

challenges and explain how we address each. We describe the structure of the course in detail, explain how

a class policy of open collaboration and a university program called Creative Inquiry complement the

proposed approach. We conclude with student evaluations and examples of apps we have produced over the

past several years.

1 INTRODUCTION

Teaching app software development is challenging.

Almost everything about it is different from a

traditional software development class in which the

target computer (on which the software developed

by the students is to run) is a laptop or desktop

computer. In a traditional object-oriented software

development class, the focus is the programming

language, how statements are formed, how classes

and methods are constructed, and how object-

oriented properties, such as inheritance, are brought

to life in the program being developed. The focus is

almost never the computer itself (laptop or desktop)

on which the program will run. It is simply assumed

that the program can read input files, take input from

the computer keyboard or mouse, write output files

and display output on the computer monitor.

In a mobile app software development class, the

programming language is only the first of several

major items that the student has to learn. The student

must also learn how to use the interactive

development environment (IDE) and the software

development kit (SDK) specifically designed for the

mobile device. This includes learning about different

types of input and output touch elements (for

example, buttons, sliders, and text boxes), working

with different types of views (for example, table

views, web views, views that allow for video),

understanding new ways of providing input (such as

gestures or speech), learning about new source

streams of time sensitive or late-breaking

information (such as Rich Site Summary, or RSS,

and Twitter feeds) learning about maps, the global

positioning system (GPS), accelerometers,

gyroscopes, the camera both video and still, and on

and on and on. Often apps must also work with app

settings or an internal database to store persistent

data. More advanced apps may also work with an

external database, for example MySQL, that the app

accesses through the web using web services written

in PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) or other

scripting languages.

Teaching a one-semester course on mobile

device software development is significantly more

challenging than teaching a one-semester course on

traditional computer science topics such as an

introduction to programming, algorithms and data

structures, compiler design and implementation, or

operating systems. In courses such as the latter, the

topic is well defined and narrow enough for the

student to grasp and develop skills for in an evenly-

P. Pargas R. and J. Speziale B..

Revamping the Classroom - Teaching Mobile App Software Development Using Creative Inquiry.

DOI: 10.5220/0004847800710079

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 71-79

ISBN: 978-989-758-022-2

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

paced and systematic manner. In a mobile device

software development course, the material that must

be covered is so broad that new approaches to

delivering course content must be developed and

employed.

This paper describes the method by which we

teach a mobile device software development course.

In Section 2, we explain in detail the challenges

facing the instructor in this app development course

and explain the approach we take in addressing these

challenges. In Section 3, we talk about the structure

of the course itself. In Section 4, we elaborate on the

Creative Inquiry Program at our university and how

it supports this course and helps generate ideas for

app projects. In Section 5, we describe some of the

apps that have emerged as the result of this effort. In

Section 6, we summarize the results of student

evaluations. In Section 7, we discuss future plans..

2 CHALLENGES / APPROACH

We find four major challenges facing an instructor

of a mobile device app development course.

The first challenge arises due to the fact that the

content is very new and also constantly changing.

The Apple iOS

and Google Android

operating

systems (OS), for example, are updated at least

annually; keeping up with the major changes in the

OS and the associated SDKs is difficult. Textbook

authors, unfortunately, cannot possibly keep up; on

the day that a textbook is published, the OS and the

SDK it references are already one version behind the

latest stable version. And so the first challenge is

finding resources that can help the student learn

about the latest version of the OS and SDK in a

timely manner.

The second challenge is that the material that has

to be covered is very broad. In iOS, this includes

learning the syntax of a language, Objective-C,

whose syntax is unlike any of the other more

commonly taught languages such as Java, C++, C#

or Python. A student wanting to take this app

development course is unlikely to be familiar with

Objective-C. (On the Android platform, this

challenge is not as great since the language used for

Android apps is Java which is known to many

students.) On both platforms, however, new course

material also includes touch input artefacts such as

buttons, sliders, segmented controls, and date

pickers as well as input finger movements such as

gestures, swipes, and multi-finger touches. The

material includes a variety of views such as web

views, table views, and views that present video and

animation, from and to which students will have to

learn how to program transitions.

The course material must also include a variety

of components and features of smartphones that are

available for software control, components such as

the still and video camera, the global positioning

system (GPS), the accelerometer, a gyroscope,

maps, and a compass. The material also includes

new sources of streaming data such as RSS feeds

and Twitter feeds. The instructor may also want to

cover sending and receiving short message service

(commonly called SMS or text) messages, or

sending and receiving email. Yet another content

topic that the instructor may want to include is

graphics for animation, using OpenGL for example.

The third challenge is how to have a discussion

of good database design and implementation. An

app may require a local database that resides in

persistent memory on the mobile device, or may

communicate with an external database that resides

on a server in the cloud and accessed via web

services. In many instances, both an internal and an

external database are required. Unfortunately, in

many computer science programs, a database design

course is an elective and not required. If such is the

case at your university as it is at ours, then a

minimum of one to two weeks of lecture will be

required to introduce very basic database design

concepts to allow for an internal and external

database implementation in the app.

The fourth and possibly the most difficult

challenge is how to make the course relevant, i.e.,

how to make the course as close to professional app

development as possible. Our goal was to avoid

having the students develop toy apps that have no

purpose other than as an exercise in programming.

How do we give our students an experience that is

close to real world app development? How do we

provide students with app ideas that have real-life

application? The challenge was to find projects that

would give our students this type of experience. We

found our answer in Creative Inquiry, a university-

wide program designed to give undergraduate

students experience in designing and developing

solutions to research problems posed by faculty

members, researchers and staff.

These four challenges require us to rethink the

manner by which we teach this course. The approach

we have chosen (which we detail in Section 3) is a

variation of the “flipped” or the “inverted”

classroom (Walvoord and Anderson, 1998;

DesLauriers, Schelew, and Wiemanm, 2011). This

variation consists of a combination of (a) minimized

lecture on the part of the instructor, (b) open

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

collaboration among the students, (c) frequent

student presentation of programming assignments,

and (d) close mentoring of the semester projects.

In order to minimize instructor lecture, we had to

find resources with which students can work outside

of class. Examples of these resources are listed in

Section 3.2.1. Students are expected to view these

video clips or tutorials before coming to class.

Proponents of flipped classrooms suggest that

allowing the students to gain what is referred to as

first-exposure learning on their own before class and

then working on applying their learning during class

can in certain situations be more effective than

traditional lecture. To be effective, an assessment

tool, such as an assignment on the material the

student learned, must be included. In our case, the

assessment tools are the four assignments described

in Section 3.2.3.

Where our approach differs from typical flipped

classrooms is in “open collaboration”. The purpose

of open collaboration is to facilitate the exploration

of as many facets of the SDK as possible. Students

are encouraged to include different app components

(compass, gyroscope, camera, GPS, etc.) in their

assignments and to share their knowledge with the

rest of the class. This is accomplished by requiring

each student to maintain a personal website on

which he or she posts URLs of sites that they have

found helpful. More importantly, the student posts

copies of his or her programming assignments

(complete with source code) when they are

submitted. Students are free to discuss and share

their programs before and after submission.

Moreover, after each assignment is evaluated, the

instructor selects the two or more best programs and

asks the students to give a brief (10-minute)

presentation to the rest of the class, focusing on the

new app components employed and describing the

corresponding source code. Students in effect teach

each other what they learned as they developed their

assignment. This is further discussed in Sections

3.2.2 and 3.2.3.

The fourth challenge is making the course

relevant. We are fortunate at our university to have

what is called a Creative Inquiry (CI) program that

encourages faculty to design one to three credit hour

courses involving undergraduate students in the

faculty member’s research. So, for example, an

English professor may be working with students in

studying the writing of British author Virginia

Woolf. A Biology professor may be interested in

engaging students in the study of swamp forests. An

Entomology professor may have his students

researching whether firefly populations are

decreasing. These and many other CI courses are

opportunities for collaboration with our app

development class. The instructor contacts the

instructors of these CI courses and discusses the

possibility of developing apps supporting these CI

efforts. Sometimes a natural collaboration between

our app class and the CI course emerges, sometimes

it doesn’t. When a potential collaboration does

emerge, the app class instructor must facilitate the

matching of one or two student app developers and

the CI course. We devote Section 4 to the Creative

Inquiry program that has provided support and a rich

source of ideas for this course, helping us respond

positively to the fourth challenge above.

3 APP COURSE STRUCTURE

In this section, we describe the organization of our

app development course (henceforth referred to

simply as X81, short for CPSC 481/681, the official

number of the course). In X81, the semester is

divided into two parts. The first half of the semester

is spent on four programming assignments of

increasing difficulty, with the requirements of each

assignment being a superset of the previous. In the

second half of the semester, the students work on a

major project. The project starts with the students

submitting a proposal for a project. After the project

is approved, the remainder of the semester is spent

on the design and implementation of the software

system.

During exam week, students formally present

their results in a class mini-conference. With the

course instructor serving as session chair, students

give 20-minute presentations and demonstrations of

their apps, just as they might at a real conference.

All are invited and project co-mentors, other

students, faculty, staff, and occasionally family

members do attend. At the end of exam week,

students submit the entire project (source code and

documentation) for a final private demonstration to

the course instructor and for final evaluation.

Each of these course components is described in

detail below, but we start with an explanation of the

choice of mobile device platform.

3.1 IOS, Android or Other?

A recent Nielsen poll in the US (Nielsen, 2013)

gives Android a 52% to 40% smartphone market

share edge over iOS. Another poll (Business Wire,

2013) gives Android a 79% to 13% edge over iOS

worldwide in the 2

Quarter 2013, suggesting that

RevampingtheClassroom-TeachingMobileAppSoftwareDevelopmentUsingCreativeInquiry

Android is surging and significantly surpassing iOS.

The takeaway from this is that Android and iOS

together dominate the smartphone market in 2013.

We are not concerned about whether Android

beats iOS or vice versa. In X81 we cover both

platforms (iOS in the fall semester and Android in

the spring). What is important to us is that we cover

the dominant platforms in this course. We keep track

of trends, however, and should another platform

(say, Windows) become a significant player in the

mobile device world, we will adapt this course

accordingly.

3.2 First Half: Building Skills

3.2.1 Gathering and Updating Materials

The first challenge listed in Section 2 describes the

difficulty of finding a textbook or other materials

that teach the student about the latest version of the

mobile device OS and SDK. For the course, we use

online materials, including videos, tutorials, sample

code, and other online resources.

For example, for iOS, in addition to the

comprehensive developer reference site provided by

Apple (Apple, 2013), we use the video series

provided by Paul Hegarty and Stanford University

available on iTunes (Hegarty, 2013). For Android, in

addition to the comprehensive developer site

provided by Google (Android, 2013), we use sites

such as Nick Parlante’s (Parlante, 2011) course

outline that provides tutorials on topics such as

intents, lifecycles, lists, GUIs, and databases.

In addition to these, throughout the semester, we

constantly search the web for new and better video

or text tutorials that provided instruction on the

latest version of the OS and SDK. Students in the

class are tasked with seeking and reporting new sites

that they find useful in developing their apps. By

doing so, the class collectively and continually keeps

the set of course resources up-to-date and available

to the entire class through the class website

maintained by the instructor.

3.2.2 Individual Student Websites

Students are required to create and maintain

individual websites specifically for this class. On

each website, students post links to resources that

they have found useful in developing their apps.

They also post the source code of each programming

assignment they submit. This is so that their code is

available for download by other members of the

class. This is part of the class policy of open

collaboration that is explained further in the next

section.

3.2.3 Assignments and Open Collaboration

In this class, student home and class activity consists

of (a) viewing video and tutorials providing detailed

instruction on app development, (b) submitting four

apps satisfying four programming assignments, (c)

when asked, giving brief (5-10 minute) impromptu

presentations about his or her programming

assignment pointing out where in the source specific

actions in the app are coded, and (d) sharing ideas

about interesting things he or she may have

discovered along the way.

The assignments are of increasing difficulty.

The first assignment asks the student to build an app

with several input controls (for example, buttons,

sliders, or text boxes) several output controls (for

example, labels, alert boxes, or images such as check

marks or smiley faces corresponding to calculated

results) and some activity that occurs when the client

touches an input control.

An important class policy is: whereas in other

programming classes, students are often forbidden

from working together and certainly never allowed

to copy one another’s code, in this class students are

not only allowed to copy each other’s work but are

encouraged to do so. The one requirement is that if a

student develops his or her app with the explicit or

implicit help of another, the recipient must explicitly

acknowledge the other student’s help and give credit

to the other both on the recipient’s website and in

the information page within the app. Giving credit

for help received is mandatory.

The rationale behind this policy of open

collaboration is that in a given assignment, different

students will go in different directions and use

different tools within the SDK. Discussion about

their apps in and out of class is strongly encouraged.

Copying code is allowed and encouraged. In this

manner, students quickly learn multiple features of

app development from their peers. The tacit

expectation, of course, is that every student brings

something new to contribute to the class collective

repository of knowledge.

The second assignment includes all the

requirements of the first app and must include

multiple views (for example, table views, web

views, or views that play audio and video). The third

assignment must include a local database created

and populated using SQLite3, a commonly used

internal database for apps. The fourth assignment

has all the requirements of the third assignment, plus

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

it must involve an external database, preference

settings and two additional features such as GPS, the

video or still camera, the accelerometer, the

gyroscope, or must capture input from some external

device such as an automotive on-board diagnostics

(OBD2) sensor which can provide the vehicle owner

or repairman or app developer with the status of

various vehicle subsystems.

By the time Assignment 4 is submitted, the

semester is half over.

3.3 Second Half: Major Project

The second half of the semester is spent on the

proposal, design, and development of a major

project.

3.3.1 Project Proposal

Students may submit an original proposal or may

select a proposal from a list of ideas provided by the

instructor. The one-page proposal is intended to be a

brief overview of the project and is the starting point

of a discussion between student(s) and instructor.

The result of the discussion is a resubmission of the

proposal with more detail and with a fairly complete

storyboard sketch. There exists software available

for free that facilitate storyboard development

producing mock-up views that look very much like

actual screenshots from a smartphone. An example

is Fluid (Fluid, 2013) that provides a software tool

for quickly and easily building mock-ups of apps.

The student has the option of proposing a project

that he or she may be interested in. Students are

encouraged to submit ideas that relate to and benefit

the university and campus life. So, for example, a

proposal to develop an app that expedites orders at a

local pizza restaurant would not be approved.

However, a proposal to (1) help newly arrived

international exchange students get around campus

using an interactive campus map, (2) complete all

university requirements for international students,

and (3) communicate with one another and with the

international student office through SMS and phone

numbers stored in internal and external databases,

this type of app proposal would be approved. (A

screenshot of this app is found in Section 5).

Most students, however, do not have a pet project

in mind. A list of ideas offered by the instructor is

the result of interaction with university faculty,

researchers, staff and administrators interested in

participating in the Creative Inquiry program.

Throughout the first half of the semester, the

instructor meets with various university personnel

(potential co-mentors) and discusses the possibility

of collaborating for the purpose of developing an

app for the co-mentor and his or her students. The

co-mentor and students provide the project content;

the X81 instructor and students provide the technical

expertise. The list is the result of this consultation

with several faculty and staff and is offered to the

X81 students as pre-approved projects.

3.3.2 Timeline, Database and Code Design

After the proposal is approved, the students develop

a project timeline or schedule of tasks and

deliverables. The instructor reviews this timeline,

critiques it and returns the modified timeline to the

students.

After the timeline is approved, database and code

module design begins. The app may require both an

internal and an external database. Final approval is

given only when the instructor is convinced that all

of the functionality proposed for the app can be

supported by the structure of the internal and

external database.

3.3.3 Presentations

Over the next three weeks, each project team gives

three short (10-minute) presentations and one full

(20-minute) final presentation before the class,

reporting on the current status of their work. The

instructor and class critique the presentation as well

as the content of the project, offering suggestions for

improvement or alternative approaches. In this

manner, each team has multiple opportunities to

refine their presentation skills as they develop the

app solution to their problem.

The final presentation occurs during exam week.

Co-mentors and students, interested faculty and

staff, and family members attend. The instructor

serves as session chair and introduces the student

speakers, as they would be at a real conference.

Every attempt is made to simulate and provide the

students with a formal conference experience,

including a soda and pizza reception at the end.

3.3.4 Final Demonstration and Submission

After the final presentations, student teams are

required to meet with the instructor one last time to

give a final, private demonstration of the software

and to submit all source code and supporting

documentation. The documentation includes a

Technical Reference Manual and a User’s Manual,

the presentation slides, and any other supporting

documents. Students have been instructed to develop

RevampingtheClassroom-TeachingMobileAppSoftwareDevelopmentUsingCreativeInquiry

the User’s Manual using language understandable by

a non-technical user of the app. The Technical

Reference Manual, on the other hand, is for a

computer science student who may want to extend

the app in the future.

4 APP IDEAS: CREATIVE

INQUIRY

The students are always given the opportunity to

propose projects for which they are interested in

developing apps. The one requirement in this class is

that the app be one that is designed to benefit

students, teachers, staff, administrators, or other

personnel in an academic environment. The app

must help students learn or teachers teach or make

life better for someone in the academic community.

Coming up with a list of suitable projects is not

easy; they must satisfy several course goals. One

course goal is for the project to take advantage of the

features of the mobile device. Another course goal is

for the project to be generic, i.e., ideally adaptable to

any university or institution, not just our university.

A third goal is for the project to be upwardly

scalable, i.e., capable of being initialized with and

holding additional content.

Once a list of potential projects has been

identified, matching the right students with the right

projects is crucial for success. It is for this reason

that we have worked with a university program

called Creative Inquiry to help us identify projects

and involve other faculty, researchers, staff, and

administrators as co-mentors of course projects.

Section 4.1 describes the general Creative

Inquiry program. Section 4.2 explains how Creative

Inquiry has helped provide app ideas and projects

for X81.

4.1 What Is Creative Inquiry?

Clemson University’s Creative Inquiry model for

undergraduate research provides students with team-

based, collaborative research experiences that

address real-world problems and prepare students

for jobs in the changing economy. Graduates have

stated that they were better prepared for jobs or

graduate school, and more attractive to employers.

Students in Creative Inquiry have developed

business plans for start-up companies and

participated in patent applications, in addition to

presenting and publishing their work.

The model develops teams of students to address

topics identified by the faculty mentors, the students,

or that are spurred by external influences. Each

project is embedded within one or more academic

courses. Projects may be multi-disciplinary. Teams

work on a given project for two or more semesters.

Some projects have a natural end point; others

continue to evolve for many years. For example, a

performing arts team dedicated two years to

developing and producing an original play. Several

English and Social Sciences teams have collaborated

on books. An award-winning interdisciplinary team -

with students from engineering, business, and the

humanities - has worked for several years to boost

economic development and the standard of living in

a Haitian village. Their signature project was

designing and installing a water system for the

village.

Each academic year, approximately 3,500

Clemson undergraduates participate in Creative

Inquiry projects. Departments, such as food science

and geology, use Creative Inquiry to attract and

retain Others departments, such as industrial

engineering and bioengineering, use it to in concert

with their senior design and freshman courses.

Students in all departments praise their experiences

as valuable in terms of the research accomplished

and the opportunities to gain insights into potential

careers.

Creative Inquiry is sustained by high levels of

student and faculty interest, substantial funding from

the university, and a demonstrated record of

accomplishments within both the academic and

business worlds. The program has grown to the point

that private donors and industries are sponsoring

student research teams. A key feature of the program

is its flexibility. Projects from all disciplines are

supported. Students are encouraged to develop ideas

for projects and then identify faculty mentors to

refine the ideas and mentor the work.

4.2 How Co-mentoring Supports X81

X81 is classified as a Creative Inquiry course. As

such, it enjoys financial support from the university;

this support is used to purchase mobile devices to be

used in the class, or pay hourly wages to students

who have taken the course before and who can serve

as teaching assistants. More importantly, though,

other members of the university recognize and

support the Creative Inquiry model and are more

willing to participate in co-mentoring a Creative

Inquiry project.

A typical project involves one or two faculty

members plus one or more of their students, i.e. the

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

X81 instructor plus one or two X81 students. For

example, one project last year involved an English

professor and avid researcher in the works of British

author Virginia Woolf. The English professor had

eight students working with her in gathering and

organizing material associated with Virginia Woolf.

These included maps where Woolf lived and

worked, pictures of British houses she lived in and

London gardens she frequented, articles written

about Woolf, essays critiquing her work, lists of

websites where one can gather more Woolf

information, and even copies of ledgers of daily

household expenses that Woolf and her husband

maintained.

Two X81 students undertook the technical

development of an app that organized the material

gathered by the English professor and her students.

The final version of the app presented the content on

an Apple iPad in an efficient, easy-to-use, and

intuitive manner. The English professor and the X81

instructor served as co-mentors of the entire group

with one guiding the software development process

and the other guiding the organization of the content.

The results of the effort were presented in an

international conference on Virginia Woolf last

spring (Sparks and Pargas, 2013).

5 RESULTS

The proof of a pie is in the eating. The proof of a

course on mobile app software development is in the

apps that are produced. Over the past two years,

students have successfully produced over 30 iOS

and Android apps.

Figure 1: Three sample apps produced by X81 students.

Three examples are shown in Figure 1. In the upper

left, iCUExchange is designed to help international

students prepare for their study at this university.

The app was designed by three international

exchange students and provides helpful information

before and after the international students arrive on

campus, including important deadlines, contact

information, tips on getting around the campus,

finding classrooms and getting to know other

people. In the upper right, the Virginia Woolf app is

designed for people who want to be able to access a

mobile collection of photos, documents, and general

information about the British author. The app serves

as a knowledgeable portable tour guide. The bottom

app, R3-ROS Robot Remote, provides an iOS user

with an interface to control robots (represented by

cubes) within a virtual world. The app uses the

gyroscope and motion sensors of iOS devices to

control the robots.

Figure 2: Two apps available at the Apple app store.

In some cases, development of apps start out in

the classroom but continue after the semester is over

and eventually are made available to the general

public. Two examples are shown in Figure 2. Swamp

Forest, shown on the left, provides a virtual field trip

through the Francis Beidler Forest and Congaree

National Park in South Carolina, USA. This and

two sister apps, Cove Forest and Salt Marsh, are all

available at the Apple app store. The Firefly Flash

Counter, shown on the right, is also available at the

Apple app store and is used by citizen scientists

around the USA to count fireflies as part of the

Vanishing Firefly Project 2013 (Baruch, 2013). In

total, six iOS apps originating from this course are

now available at the Apple app store and one

Android app will be available on the Google play

store in spring 2014.

Undoubtedly, instructors at many universities

have developed app development courses with

approaches similar to this course (e.g., Muppala,

RevampingtheClassroom-TeachingMobileAppSoftwareDevelopmentUsingCreativeInquiry

2011). We feel, however, that this course is different

from others with its policy of open collaboration and

with the availability of the Creative Inquiry program

to provide support and real project ideas. Open

collaboration is a powerful and effective way to

cover large numbers of disparate topics related to

app development and Creative Inquiry is a rich

source for real-life projects.

6 STUDENT EVALUATION

This three-credit course has been well received by

students. Students may count it as one of two

computer science electives and therefore the course

must compete for student enrolment with over 15

other elective computer science courses. It

consistently attracts between 15 and 18 students

each semester, a very good and manageable size for

a project course.

Multiple end-of-semester evaluations show that

over 85% agree or strongly agree (ASA) that the

course added significant value to their resumes and

transcripts, over 90% ASA that the open

collaboration policy helped them learn the material

more easily, and among students who chose a

Creative Inquiry project, over 85% ASA that

working on an actual research project with a co-

mentor and students from other disciplines was a

valuable educational experience. Moreover, over

90% would recommend this course to other students

and over 85% reported that they were satisfied with

the learning that they received.

On the negative side, over 95% felt that the

amount of work required by the course was

significantly greater than other three credit hour

computer sciences courses and over 85% spent on

average over 10 hours per week on this one course.

A bit surprisingly, relatively few students (less

than 10%) felt that the absence of a textbook

hindered their learning of the material. Moreover,

over 95% ASA that much of their learning came

from discussions with their classmates and over 75%

ASA that they were successful in finding answers to

technical questions on blog sites.

7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

Teaching mobile device software development

indeed is challenging. The rapidly changing software

tools, the amount of material that must be covered,

the need of students for database design skills, and

the constant search for real-world applications pose

significant problems for the instructor of such a

class. Traditional lecture by the instructor no longer

suffices. New approaches such as open collaboration

among students, frequent presentation of coding tips

by students, and continuous communication between

instructor and students and among students

themselves, are necessary in order for student

projects to be successful. And support by the

university for undergraduate research projects in

programs such as Creative Inquiry, both in terms of

academic credit as well as monetary support, helps

generate the all important research ideas that

produce realistic and beneficial app projects.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are grateful to the students who have

taken and participated in this app development

course, to faculty who have served as co-mentors,

and for the continued support received from the

Clemson University Creative Inquiry Program.

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CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

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RevampingtheClassroom-TeachingMobileAppSoftwareDevelopmentUsingCreativeInquiry