Resource:How to Teach Students to Build Good Software as a Team

Our interviewee, Isaac Griswold-Steiner, is a changemaker whose passion for software development and leadership qualities, has allowed him to become President of Texas Tech's Software Development Club (SDC) and land internships at innovative technical companies such as Microsoft and National Instruments. With his advice, we are able to give you an advice on how to teach students to build good software as a team.

INTRODUCTION

Isaac is a software developer currently studying in Texas Tech, who learnt to code and found an interest in I&E while working for his startup in India. Although his startup eventually failed, he learned a lot about team designing, management and organizing that help him till date. His software experience includes machine learning, data science, and working with Linux kernel.

NEED AND GOAL

As President of Texas Tech's SDC, there are two main goals that Isaac focuses on:

1. Making students more appealing to companies by working on projects outside of class
2. Preparing students for the kinds of interviews they will face at big technology driven companies

While studying at Texas Tech, Isaac realized the education imparted to the students was not a representation of what is actually demanded in the industries. For instance, the very basis for software developing lies in source control which was taught as a part of syllabus during late years of education in college. Thus there is a difficulty in meeting the industrial standards, students aren't prepared and lack the skills required in an industry. Hence, with an aim to meet the industrial standards, he joined the existing Software Development Club of college. Different strategies like open ended contributions, structured layout for different teams in the club are applied with the ultimate aim of growing the passion of the students, create a student population which tries to seek information rather than stay contented with the redundant information fed to them in classes, and ultimately learns.

TOPIC

When teaching students how to build good software as a team, it is important to NOT only focus on the programming languages that students should know, but to also focus on architected software. Without having a way to properly structure code, a lot of business tend to fail. This is can be compared to having architecture for a building...it is a necessity!

ACADEMIC PERMISSION

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SUPPORT

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COST

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LEADERSHIP

When building a successful, collaborative organization, Isaac states that leaders must foster curious, failure accepting ideologies. He continuously enforces the idea that students have a duty to teach themselves using what's available online. Successful students must also engage in projects outside the classroom as long gone are the days where extracurricular activities are ranked less than classroom work. Students must also be willing to fail gracefully. Our current educational infrastructure pigeon holes students into believing that there is nothing worse than failure when that could not be less true. Failure leads to learning and personal growth which are imperative at keeping an organization fresh and growing.

FACULTY

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AUDIENCE

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TIMELINE 

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LAUNCH

Students who were involved in the SDC saw benefits if they worked for it. Some students who participated in hackathons got to showcase their projects in front of the club and others who nailed internships with large firms went around to classrooms to speak with students about the opportunity the the SDC provides. If a student wants to launch their own technology venture, Isaac makes sure to push them towards doing their due diligence on the market followed by Agile development practices.