Information to Project Sponsors

The Computer Science Department gladly accepts projects from outside. While the intention is to get projects for the capstone project course in the MSE program (worth of 12 credits, equivalent to 4 courses), the Department also accepts projects of less complexity. These simple projects can be carried out as course projects. The MSE program has several courses that require the students to complete a software development project.

Projects may require the students to develop software products from scratch that include all phases of software life cycle except maintenance (requirements gathering and analysis, requirements specification, design, implementation, testing and demonstration). Some projects may require to re-engineer existing software products, possibly onto new platforms or may require to incorporate new technologies. The MSE Project Evaluation Committee will decide whether or not a project can be considered as a course project or a capstone project.

Interested sponsors are encouraged to contact the MSE Program Director for further information. To start with, a project sponsor must send a fairly detailed project description to the MSE Program Director. As a follow-up, the Program Director will discuss the project with the sponsor and suggest modifications, if any. The Program Director will then find a suitable student to complete the project and will continue the discussion with the sponsor and the student. At the end of the discussion, the student will be required to submit a project proposal to the MSE Project Evaluation Committee. After getting approval from the committee, the student continues to work on the project with the supervision of a graduate faculty member from the Computer Science Department and the project sponsor. It is the project sponsor's responsibility to ensure that the student makes adequate progress that meets the requirements expected by the sponsor. The faculty advisor will check the academic performance of the student in doing the project. There will be a contract between the project sponsor and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse that determines the owner of the product, intellectual property rights and financial commitments, if any, for the project. These are negotiable between the project sponsor and the University.

Some sample projects that are accepted by the MSE committee are given below; the project sponsors' information is not included because of privacy constraints.

Project title: Classroom Information Management System

Type: MSE capstone project

Status: In progress

Description:
This is a re-engineering project. The existing product is a stand-alone product implemented using FileMakerPro. It maintains students information and is used typically by a school teacher. There are several limitations imposed by FileMakerPro which restricts the use and extension of this product. The project attempts to re-engineer it using a different language and tools. In addition, several new features are going to be added. The product will be converted into a networked product so that it can be accessed using a web-interface.

Project title: Automated Dispatcher

Type: MSE capstone project

Status: In progress

Description:
This is also a re-engineering project. The existing product is a stand-alone product implemented using FoxPro. It is used o maintain the taxis and limos on service. An operator manually enters the information about dispatching and billing. The new product is expected to be re-engineered using a different language. Several new features are going to be added. In addition, dispatching and billing must be done by the software automatically.

Project title: A Tool to derive OO design from Functional Specification

Type: MSE capstone project

Status: In progress

Description:
The student is attempting to develop a tool that extracts design information from a structured requirements document. The tool will generate most of the information for an OO design, even though the tool will not be able to generate a perfect design. It can also be used to evaluate the quality of the requirements based on the extraction of design information. The method was proposed by Kasi and his colleague and was published in a journal and in a conference.

Project title: A Game Scheduler

Type: MSE capstone project

Status: In progress

Description:
A Recreational Sports Department wants to develop a software product that can be used to register players and schedule games automatically. Currently, they are using commercial products but they seem to have several restrictions. It is not possible to tailor the commercial product to their needs. The current product is expected to be used by the students and by the department and will have a web-based interface.

Project title: Software to handle waiting lists

Type: Course project

Status: Completed and in use

Description:
A department in the university wanted to automate the process that handles waiting lists for its courses. A software product was developed by one of the MSE students that is accessible both by the students and the program assistant in the department. The students enter their personal information while the program assistant will use the software to notify the students when vacancies arise in any of the courses. It is planned to integrate this software product with the university registration system so that the software will automatically inform the student when a vacancy arises, thereby reducing the workload for the program assistant.

Project title: Software to maintain student profiles

Type: Course project

Status: Completed and in use

Description:
A department in the university wanted to maintain the students' profiles in a graduate program. The software performs all bookkeeping information about the students in this graduate program. It will enable the program assistant to dig out administrative information such as the number of courses a student is currently taking, the number of active students, etc.

Project title: Software to prepare annual reports for faculty members, the department and the college

Type: Course project

Status: In progress

Description:
This software will provide a web-based interface through which faculty members will enter their information to prepare an annual report. The software will compile a department report and will also compile a summary report for the college. It can be configured to meet any organization that required a hierarchical report structure.

Master of Software Engineering (MSE)

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• Information to Project Sponsors