Collateral learning of mobile computing: an experience report

We wanted to cover mobile computing in our curriculum without incurring the costs of adding a new course to the curriculum or hiring a new instructor to the faculty roster. We did so through collateral learning, by incorporating mobile computing into the projects of two existing upper-level Computer Science courses: Organization of Programming Languages and Artificial Intelligence. We recount our experience using collateral learning of mobile computing over the last four years: motivation, logistics, course-specific details, reception by students, results of course evaluations, challenges faced and solutions devised. Our experience affirms that collateral learning is an excellent option for incorporating emerging topics such as drone programming, cybersecurity and parallel computing into the curriculum at resource-strapped Computer Science departments.