Incorporating real-world projects in teaching computer science courses

Research has shown students are more motivated and more likely to perform active learning when working on real-world projects that have societal impact. The Computer Science Department at Middle Tennessee State University has embarked on the task of incorporating real-world projects into multiple courses across the curriculum. This paper describes the real world project collection process and a management framework being developed to collect and track the usage of real-world projects for Computer Science courses. It discusses pilot courses that used real-world projects in teaching various computing subjects, as well as lessons learned from these pilot studies.