A Multi-Disciplinary Mobile Applications Project Course at the Graduate Level

We describe five years of experience and learning with a graduate project course that brings together students from many disciplines – health, education, music, science, etc. – with graduate-level programmers from Computer Engineering and Computer Science. The goal of the course is to create a prototype of a mobile application in the field of the non-programmer. The course provides experience in cross-discplinary ideation, interaction and communication, and has resulted in a number of exciting ideas. This paper describes the structure of the course as it has evolved, with commentary on what works and does not, including assignments, group forming, and project milestones. We then describe a few of the specific project outcomes, give a general sense of the remainder, and describe issues and future directions for the course.