Multidisciplinary teams to fulfill apprenticeship requirements in industry

At the University of Rhode Island (URI), we require all B.S. CS majors to take two consecutive semesters of SEA (software engineering apprenticeship) with industry, or with a research or development group on campus. The students are expected to find positions that require them to work with a group of software professionals to carry out software design, implementation, quality assurance and/or maintenance activities. Most students find individual positions in industry and are managed on site. In this funded project we managed two teams of 5 students from engineering, computer science, business administration, and art, with an MBA student from our Business program as manager. Students were also advised by a team of professionals from GTECH and professors at URI in a series of seminars to carry out the various aspects of their projects. The team composition mirrored the philosophy of removing specialized silos and creating teams at GTECH to carry out their own projects. In this project, the students were asked to spend some time on market analysis and software plans before the design and implementation phase. They designed and developed prototype video games for the company during two semesters. This was a highly popular project for the students. GTECH was also very happy with the results.