BADA Internship: Developing Learners' Skills through Problem-based Learning and Agile Methods within a Work Environment

Abstract

This paper describes the methodology and achievements of an educational training program in development of mobile applications. Following a Problem-Based learning approach combined with agile techniques of software development oriented to user-experience, this internship immersed the students in a real professional environment, with its real market pressure, where they could put in practice theoretical knowledge and have their productions evaluated by real users. The interns experienced the whole process of developing mobile applications, from systematic idea generation to technical implementation and submission for evaluation by the client. With the help of the support team and the pedagogical structure of the program, the interns were able to overcome many challenges and deliver more applications than expected by the client, many of which received high user ratings and specific recognition.

Full text

BADA INTERNSHIP: DEVELOPING LEARNERS SKILLS THROUGH
PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING AND AGILE METHODS WITHIN A WORK
ENVIRONMENT
'
Taciana Pontual Falcão, Davi Hirafuji Neiva, Eduardo Araújo Oliveira
CESAR
Rua Bione, 220, Cais do Apolo – Bairro do Recife, CEP: 50.030-390, Recife – PE, Brazil
{taciana.pontual; davi.hirafuji; eduardo.oliveira}@cesar.org.br
ABSTRACT
This paper describes the methodology and achievements
of an educational training program in development of
mobile applications. Following a Problem-Based learning
approach combined with agile techniques of software
development oriented to user-experience, this internship
immersed the students in a real professional environment,
with its real market pressure, where they could put in
practice theoretical knowledge and have their productions
evaluated by real users. The interns experienced the whole
process of developing mobile applications, from
systematic idea generation to technical implementation
and submission for evaluation by the client. With the help
of the support team and the pedagogical structure of the
program, the interns were able to overcome many
challenges and deliver more applications than expected by
the client, many of which received high user ratings and
specific recognition.
KEY WORDS
Advanced Technology in Education and Training,
Institutional Issues on Technology-based Education and
Training, Internship in Mobile Software Development,
Agile Methods.
1. Introduction
The world is getting smaller and faster. Transistors are
having their size reduced by the minute, there are faster
frequencies, faster memories, more resources, and dual-
core and quad-core processors fitting within a tiny
rectangle, making devices increasingly portable. The
information processing has been thoroughly integrated
into everyday objects and activities (ubiquitous
computing) [11]. Mobile devices can be carried hassle
free and help us to remember appointments or make a
call, but nowadays, smartphones can do much more than
these simple tasks. Checking the weather, looking up
maps, and connecting to the internet are a just a few
examples of the functionalities brought by smartphones.
Thousands of mobile applications make smartphones
adjust to people’s needs. Such scenario creates the need
for qualified professionals to design and develop mobile
applications that attend increasing user and market
demands. Highly-qualified training and education in this
field opens up great professional opportunities for learners
in Computer Science, Design and related areas.
The internship program presented in this paper was a
collaborative initiative of the Research and Development
(R&D) team of Samsung (a mobile phone developer in
the market of high-tech electronics manufacturing and
digital media), and CESAR (a Brazilian Information and
Communication Technology Innovation Institute). The
main objective of the program was to make the interns
experience and learn about a software development
process which took into high account aspects of User
eXperience (UX), and that was expected to produce high-
quality products for the BADA Mobile Operating System,
that would satisfy the demands of the market. To reach
this goal, the pedagogical approach of Problem-Based
Learning (PBL) was combined with software
development techniques of Scrum and Kanban, creating a
professional environment (physically located at CESAR)
where the interns learned by doing: they learned about a
software development process while taking part in it, and
producing ‘real’ products for the ‘real’ world. During ten
months, twenty-six students learned how to develop
mobile applications for a family of mobile phones,
running BADA operational system. They went through
the application conception and design, definition of
requirements, technical development and submission to
the mobile phone company’s evaluation team.
This paper describes the methodology of the internship
program, where different techniques were combined
within an educational training program in the field of
software development, and analyses the achievements of
the group that followed such pedagogical and technical
approach.
2. Methodology
Twenty-six students from the field of Information and
Communication Technologies took part in this internship
program. Most interns had just finished or were finishing
their graduation course in Computer Science or similar
fields, and had limited work experience. Interns had tutors
to support them in their work at CESAR, and took courses
based on the Problem-Based Learning (PBL)
methodology. The courses covered: an introduction to
PBL (so that interns were aware of the methodology they
Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference
Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE 2012)
June 25 - 27, 2012 Napoli, Italy
DOI: 10.2316/P.2012.774-029
189

were going to experience, and how to make the best of it);
creativity techniques and ideation; programming
languages, concepts and techniques and basic and
advanced platform components for developing
applications for the BADA operating system.
The interns experienced a full development cycle of
mobile applications, starting from generation of ideas,
following agile methods of software development with
elements of Kanban and Scrum methodologies, and with
the support of a team of User eXperience (UX) and
design.
The interns were evaluated in a holistic manner, i.e.
not only based on their grades from each course, but also
for their overall performance considering initiative, team
work, flexibility, communication, self-development,
ability to estimate and follow deadlines, and technical
achievement. They were evaluated in a continuous
manner by their tutor, the technical leader, and the
coordinator of the internship, through project status
meetings and analysis of their technical production. In this
section, the methodology adopted in the internship is
discussed in details.
2.1 Problem- ased Learning b
The pedagogical methodology of Problem-Based
Learning (PBL) was proposed and applied by the
Educational Department of CESAR (CESAR.EDU). This
methodology suggests an “out of the box” thinking where
students learn something new by facing a problem to be
solved.
PBL first appearance took place at medical schools in
the 1970’s, when the students were having unsatisfactory
clinical performance as a result of a lot of study but little
“practice time” [4]. PBL can be defined as a curriculum
development and delivery system that recognizes the need
to develop problem solving skills as well as the necessity
of helping students to acquire necessary knowledge and
skills [7]. Its adoption throughout medical universities
was very well accepted [4]. Research has shown that PBL
can increase retention of knowledge, enhance the transfer
of concepts to new problems, increase intrinsic interest in
the subject and enhance self-directed learning skills [6].
PBL was adapted to fit the needs and goals of the
Samsung and CESAR for the internship in ICT. Most of
the interns that participated in this program had never had
any contact with PBL. Before experiencing PBL, these
students used to learn through traditional teaching
methods (as passive subjects). This methodology
contributed to students’ motivation, bringing new ways of
learning and solving problems (as active subjects). With
PBL support, the students dealt with a new paradigm of
learning (constructivist paradigm) where they were
responsible for constructing their own knowledge through
the proposed problems, related research, and discussion.
Each student had their laptop computer and a
problem was presented for everyone to solve using the
Samsung’s resource material. One example of PBL
application during the internship was: in the course on
BADA, the teacher introduced the theory (BADA
Application Programming Interface - API, mobile
applications lifecycle, etc.) and presented the Integrated
Development Environment (IDE). After that, he suggested
a problem to be solved in groups. To solve the problem,
the students needed to make use of contents previously
presented and new contents that they had to seek and learn
by themselves. The first problem they had to solve was:
“how to create a to-do list with user input?” To overcome
this challenge, they had to use components and
functionalities of BADA API, like date picker, list view,
user input, data manipulation, etc. This helped them form
the basics of a new technology that they were learning by
doing.
The knowledge that is required to solve the problem
was not previously presented in details for the students.
With PBL support, it was expected that students would
find the solution of the problem by conducting research,
group discussions, etc. Generally, the students were
presented to some theory during the mornings (for
example the BADA operating system, its language in use,
the programming environment and basic coding syntax, as
discussed before), and had the afternoons to solve the
challenges proposed. The solution had to be presented in
the next class, on the following day. Since their prior
knowledge of the problem was limited, students needed to
seek ways of further self-directed learning, as advocated
by the PBL methodology [3], [9].
During the internship program, PBL was applied to
direct students during a full cycle of the development of
mobile applications. With the goal of delivering fifty-four
applications in seven months, classes had to go at a quick
pace and P s
practice and start building their applications since the
beginning. w no f group division f
solving the challen , s w s
after they had finished solving the problem,
a lot of interaction taking place. Tutors and the technical
leader were also available to give students some support
and orientation.
In the first module of the program, corresponding to
the first step of the development process, students were
asked to generate a number of ideas for mobile
applications. To reach this goal, they were presented to a
number of creativity techniques, as described in the next
section.
2.2 Creativity Techniques
The first module of the program consisted of teaching the
students how to generate ideas for mobile applications,
which would be developed during the internship.
Although creativity is commonly seen as a ‘natural’
quality one may have or not, related to reasoning, senses
and emotions, there are formal techniques to
systematically support the process of ideas generation and
accelerate the creation process [1], [8]. Creativity
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techniques help designers and developers to create ideas
the moment they are needed, avoiding sole dependency on
spontaneous, ad-hoc creativity. Creativity techniques are
employed by organizations to increase efficiency and
quality, especially in research, strategic planning and
marketing departments, but also for product development,
product design and software design [8]. In a software
design process such as the one described in this paper,
creativity is applied to defining form, function and
information of products [1], [5].
The techniques experimented by the interns were
Techniques of Exploration of the Creative Process, as
opposed to Techniques of Exploration of the Logical
Process [5]. Techniques related to the Logical Process
organize and combine known parameters within the
solution space, to create new alternatives for the products.
The techniques employed in the internship program here
described stimulate creativity to find solutions to a
problem related to the products. In the case of the
internship, the problem was to create mobile applications
that would be appealing and useful for the target users of
the mobile phone company.
The interns experienced a number of techniques,
including: Brainstorm, Method 6-3-5, Bionics and Six
Thinking Hats.
Brainstorming is one of the best known and most
used group methods. It is based on discussion with no
criticism, in order to encourage original and spontaneous
thinking and produce a large number of ideas. Judgment is
made on a subsequent phase, when participants are asked
to select the best ideas. Brainstorming usually produces a
large number of ideas in a relatively short period of time,
but it can be difficult to control the session and resulting
ideas can be superficial [1], [8].
Method 6-3-5 uses a structured procedure for
generating and developing ideas in writing. There are 6
participants per group, who initially generate 3 ideas each,
which are refined in rounds of 5 minutes by passing the
sheets of paper around until everyone has analyzed each
idea [8].
Bionics is a specific application of analogies with
Biology, where ideas are inspired in nature and
transferred to technical problems. From the description of
the problem, the participants search for similar principles
or processes in animal or plant life, and generate new
ideas from similarities identified. So far, bionics has not
been widely used in the industrial innovation process. It
can be difficult to find an appropriate analogy in nature
and to apply the analogy without expert knowledge [8].
Six Thinking Hats is a technique created by Edward
de Bono which consists of a role-play with six different
roles, represented by coloured hats. Each hat defines rules
to direct the frame of mind of the person wearing that
specific hat. The white hat focuses on information, the red
on feelings and intuition, the black focuses on what can
go wrong, the yellow is optimist, the green focuses on
creativity and new ideas, and the blue hat keeps discipline
in the process [8].
Following the PBL methodology, the interns learned
about these techniques by applying them to their real
problem: developing mobile applications for a specific
target population, composed of the usual clients of the
aimed phones and their families. The profile of such
population was informed by Samsung, and corresponded
to upper class and upper-middle class men and women,
and their young children, who borrowed their parents’
phone to play. Such profile was taken into consideration
during idea generation sessions.
Students were asked to experiment the process of
ideas generation with each technique, as they were
presented to them during the classes. After the end of the
program, the interns were informally asked for their
opinions about the techniques. Six Thinking Hats was one
of the preferred techniques of the interns. They said this
technique allowed to aggregate different views for a
specific aspect, and this was an efficient mechanism for
refining ideas. Furthermore, the rules of the thinking hats
technique helped to keep participants focused on
reflecting about different aspects of one idea, which kept
the process more organized. The 6-3-5 method was said to
allow a rapid generation of many ideas in a short period of
time, and to allow collective refinement of an idea that
can seem too simple in the beginning and becomes
innovative after a round of additions from the group. 6-3-
5 and brainstorm were considered by the interns easy to
apply and good for generating a great number of ideas, in
relation to Bionics and Six Thinking Hats, which were
time-consuming and did not generate as many ideas.
During this process of idea generation, the interns had the
support of the CESAR User Experience team. All ideas
were collected and consolidated by the UX team, to be
evaluated by the mobile phone company.
2.3 Benchmarking and Design
The UX team continuously consolidated all ideas
generated through the creativity techniques and evaluated
them in rounds with the client, Samsung. As a result, a
number of ideas were selected to be developed, according
to the client’s preferences. The UX team performed a
benchmarking in various mobile applications online stores
to find similar applications in the market and suggest
innovations. Based on such market research, the UX team
developed the concept of the application and designed the
wireframe in Balsamiq prototyping tool. A wireframe, in
this context, is a sketch that represents the flow between
the screens of the application, giving an overview of how
the application will function and which features will be
available (Figure 1).
For each selected idea, a document was created and
submitted to Samsung, consisting of:
 Concept of the application;
 Benchmarking: similar applications in the market
and suggested innovations;
 Wireframe;
 Two options of visual theme.
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Figure 1. Wireframe of an application to teach guitar tabs.
2.4 Technical Development
To develop the applications, the interns were divided in
three teams, which counted with a tutor, a UX designer, a
graphic designer, and a software test engineer each.
Collectively, the teams were expected to deliver fifty-four
mobile applications by the end of the program. For
educational purposes, the applications were developed
during three main cycles, in the following manner: in the
first cycle, within their larger teams, the interns worked in
groups of four or five on the same application; in the
second cycle, the interns worked in groups of three on the
same application; in the last cycle, each intern was
expected to implement an application on their own,
although peer communication and support was
encouraged and highly put in practice. During the first
two months of the program, the interns had classes in the
mornings and worked on their applications during the
afternoons. After that, classes became less frequent so that
they were focused on the applications development during
all day.
As the program progressed and the number of
applications in development increased, it became harder
for CESAR management team to keep track of all
applications and give appropriate support to the interns.
On the other hand, the interns themselves were getting
lost in the process, and having trouble to estimate their
effort considering their learning curve.
In order to keep the process organized, well paced
and give all students a sense products progress and formal
processes of software development, elements of Scrum
and Kanban approaches were integrated to the flow.
Scrum is a framework used to organize teams and get
work done more productively with higher quality. Scrum
helps teams to decide the amount of work to be done and
how to do it. It has techniques that allow selection of work
based on business value, and quickly and easily adapt to
changing requirements during the development process
(as it is based on ‘sprints’, which are short, regular
iterations). The team has autonomy to select its own work,
and self-organize through mutual agreement [10].
Elements of the Scrum framework were introduced
during the development of the applications, to meet an
identified need of the teams for a more structured process.
A critical need of the interns was the ability to plan
realistically what they were able to deliver given a certain
amount of time, and how long it would take them to finish
each application. Because they were dealing with real
market demands, unrealistic commitment led to unmet
deadlines that had impacts for the client. Bringing
elements of Scrum to the process was instrumental to
enforce interns to exercise their autonomy and
responsibility, and plan and estimate more carefully and
precisely. At first, only a few students were chosen for a
pilot, with the goal of evaluating how they would adapt to
the methodology, and if they could cope with the demands
of the method. As the pilot was successful, the technique
was extended to all teams.
Instead of dealing with functionalities, the
applications were divided into user stories, which were
written by the UX designer of each application, as shown
in Figure 2. Before the beginning of the development of
an application, interns would have a meeting (Scrum
Planning Meeting) where Scrum roles were simulated in
the following way: the scrum master was to team’s tutor;
the product owner was the UX designer of the application;
and the interns were the Scrum team. During this meeting,
the stories were revised and classified into simple,
medium and complex, creating the product backlog. The
stories were then organized on post-its on the walls in
columns of ‘backlog’, ‘to do’ and ‘done’, as shown in
Figure 2.
Interns would have daily meetings in front of these
walls, to report to their tutor what they were doing at that
moment, their progress, and the challenges they were
facing (impediments). Every week, interns had to deliver
the stories they had committed to implement for that
sprint. For each one week long sprint, new stories would
be picked and current ones would have to be
demonstrated on the phone and validated by the tutor and
the UX designer, before being sent to the testing engineer.
This process helped the interns to have a better
understanding of every step they would have to take, and
keep track of things that still had to be done.
Figure 2. Scrum user stories
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The Kanban methodology was used at a higher level,
mainly for management purposes. With a high number of
applications going through different phases of
development and evaluation, back and forth between a
numerous group of developers, some designers, test
engineers and the client, it became challenging to keep
track of all applications while guiding the whole team
through the process. Kanban appeared in Japan from
Toyota Product System. It focuses on visibility of the
process and identification of bottlenecks, within a chain
representation. According to Kanban principles, new work
should only be initiated when previous work is finishing
[2]. In the internship program described in this paper, all
ideas for applications approved by the client were stuck to
the first column of a Kanban board, waiting to enter the
cycle of development, as presented in Figure 3. The white
board with colored post-its is a way of visually controlling
the flow of the development. The white board used here
had a row for each team of interns, and the following
columns: 1- backlog (ideas approved by the client); 2-
benchmarking (performed by the UX team); 3- wireframe
(performed by the UX team); 4- technical implementation
(development by the interns and testing by the test
engineers); 5- acceptance (applications published in the
Samsung Apps online store). Additionally, small post-its
with the team members’ names were used to identify who
was working in which activity, in which phase. The dates
of entering and leaving the board were recorded for each
application, which allowed measuring the average
development time and the outliers.
The Kanban board became the main reference for the
CESAR team to follow the progress of the applications.
Daily stand-up meetings of the team of tutors, designers
and test engineers with the general team leader were held
in front of the board, and each application in development
was discussed. The status of each application was updated
continuously by the designers and test engineers, by
moving them along the columns of the board.
Figure 3. The Kanban board
The Kanban board was instrumental in keeping a
very good visibility of the progress of the groups, and
helped identifying issues and reallocating the workload
between the designers and test engineers, even across
teams, so as to meet the deadlines. The interns also
became familiar with the board, and used to come over to
it to analyze the backlog of ideas and their progress.
As the applications were accepted to Samsung App
Store, they were moved from the Kanban board to the
‘store board’ (Figure 4). This transition was purposively
festive, so as to motivate and recognize the effort of each
student, and celebrate their achievement.
Figure 4. Applications published on the store
3. Achievements
The internship program delivered sixty-three mobile
applications for the Samsung App Store, superseding the
number of applications initially required by the client.
Perhaps more valuable than these achievements, however,
was the learning and professional experience for the
interns. In this section, we describe the challenges faced
and the skills and experience acquired by the interns, and
the concrete results at the end of the program.
3.1 Challenges
Challenges at different levels were encountered during the
internship. As mentioned before, the internship consisted
of classes going from idea conceptualization to
information technology, and for the first time, during
conceptualization classes, interns had to forget a little
about the computer world and start thinking about the
‘real’ world. What were the world’s needs, what was a
real problem, what could they do to make something
easier, or funnier or more entertaining, which generated a
lot of discussions.
From the point of view of technical expertise for
developing the applications, the students faced a slow
initial learning curve before being able to start
implementing, which brought quite a lot of anxiety, and
delayed the technical development. BADA operating
system uses C++ as its primary programming language.
Most of the students had only experience with high level
programming languages like Java or C#, so for most of
them working with pointers and references was new and
challenging. While trying to solve each problem proposed
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in class, the students needed to count a lot on the teachers
and technical leader’s support. In some cases, the
applications to be developed needed content that had not
yet been explored in the classes. This was a pedagogical
challenge: how to match the content calendar with the
applications selected by the client. To overcome this
challenge, interns had to learn on their own to solve the
specific problem, with the eventual help of the technical
leader.
When dealing with new technology the learning
curve is pretty high. In ten months, there were three
delivery dates for the applications. In the first cycle,
applications were implemented by groups of three inters
due to the fact that everyone was facing something new.
In the second iteration, applications were developed by
two interns and in the last delivery date, there was one
application per student. This helped to slowly increase
responsibilities of students since all of them had little or
no work experience.
The internship had only one allocated graphical
designer per group, and as the number of applications
grew, the designers ran behind with producing the art
work for each screen of the applications. As a result,
deliveries were delayed and students had to wait for the
designer before completing their own work. Additionally,
integration with the art caused a lot of rework. Since
applications would begin development lacking the final
art work, the design would be just a developer’s
workaround to have a functional application prototype.
During the program, more designers had to be allocated as
an emergency measure.
Overall, the main difficulties encountered were
during the initial phase of the internship, where
everything was new for the interns and their lack of
experience was somewhat a worry. Nevertheless, the
whole structure and organization provided by the
managers and support team helped to overcome all these
challenges.
3.2 Learning and Professional Experience
At the end of the program, the interns were asked for their
opinions about the experience. The most important aspect,
mentioned by all interns, was the opportunity to improve
professional and social skills at the same time. Acquiring
technical knowledge was to be expected, but being placed
in such work environment and experiencing real
challenges, pressure from the market and the client, and
having to deliver applications for the world while
learning, were key aspects that highly contributed for the
motivation, dedication and learning process of the interns.
Experiencing a complete, real process of developing
software, within a multidisciplinary team and towards a
common goal, and learning about different formal
processes of development while actually following them
in practice, was considered extremely valuable by the
interns.
The interns commented on how they could develop
their social skills related to team work, with people with
different roles, backgrounds and expertise, and learn from
each other. Being able to learn from interaction with
others but also share their own knowledge was considered
very motivating. Constant feedback from colleagues and
especially from tutors and managers was extremely
appreciated by the interns. The general rule was that
everyone was always ready and happy to help, reaching
the group’s goals, and having fun.
The team that supported the interns noticed their
individual progress during the program, and their will to
contribute for the design of the applications, suggesting
ideas and improvements. The interns themselves felt, at
the end of the internship, that they were ready for the
industry.
3.3 Mobile Applications
Sixty-three mobile applications were delivered to the
mobile phone company by the end of the internship
program, superseding the client’s requirement of fifty-
four. Applications included casual games like Tangram
and other puzzles, finding the odd one out and running
with fingers on the touchscreen; health and fitness
applications e.g. teaching Yoga positions; utilities like trip
budget, travel regulations and RSS reader; cooking quick
recipes; educational activities for children like dot-to-dot
and Kids’ Math; and many others. All applications were
originally produced in Brazilian Portuguese and
professionally translated to English and Spanish, to be
sent to online stores worldwide. In addition, the internship
program caught the attention of a BADA expert Russian
blogger (www.badaworld.net), who volunteered to
translate the applications to Russian and submitted them
to stores of Russia and Ukraine. Many of the applications
produced by the interns were published and very well
rated in expert blogs (best-apps.t3.com/apps/;
www.mojebada.cz; www.badabrasil.com.br) (e.g. the
coloring application for children shown in Figure 5, and a
partial list of applications published at badabrasil - Figure
6).
Most of the applications had positive reviews by the
users of the Samsung Apps Store (3.5 stars out of 5).
Individual achievements include: applications reaching
the top downloads of different stores (e.g. ‘Tangram’ as
Top 3 of the United Kingdom store, and ‘Street Runner’
as Top 1 Entertainment and Top 5 of all free applications
- Brazilian store, among others); and Dot-to-dot (Figure 7)
and Color It (Figure 5) applications being selected for
presentation at the international event IFA – Consumer
Electronics Unlimited, one of the world’s largest and most
important trade fair for consumer electronics, in 2011 in
Berlin.
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Figure 5. Color It application rating at best-apps.t3.com
Figure 6. Partial list of applications developed at the
internship program, published at badabrasil forum
Figure 7. Dot-to-dot, application presented at IFA 2011
The application Timetable for Children (a diary for
parents to keep track of their children’s activities – Figure
8) had a very high number of downloads and caught the
attention of Samsung in Korea. The interns were formally
congratulated and asked to port the application to other
mobile phones. It was also translated to Italian and
French. Following this initiative, Samsung asked for other
applications to be ported as well to three other models of
mobile phones before the end of the internship program,
so that more customers would have access to them.
Figure 8. Timetable for Children, record of downloads of
the internship program
4. Conclusion
This paper presented an experience of educational and
professional training for mobile software development,
where students learned concepts by applying them to a
real professional context where they were immersed,
under real market demands. Overall, results show that the
methodology adopted was successful in many aspects.
By the end of the program, sixty-three applications
were successfully submitted to the mobile phone company
Applications Store, where many received good feedback
from users. The goal of this internship, however, was not
only to deliver all the applications to the client, but mainly
to teach students new technologies (and put them in
practice), software development techniques, and to
prepare them for their starting professional careers,
providing a solid background on how a software
development project flows, how to think about the users
when developing applications, how a company works and
especially how the clients and the market demand. To
reach this goal, a Problem-Based Learning approach
proved very adequate.
Lessons learned during the program showed that
aggregating to the PBL methodology elements of agile
software development techniques was instrumental to help
the interns focus and organize their workload, as well as
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to allow the whole team to keep track of the collective
progress, and meet deadlines. Intense peer collaboration,
sense of being part of a team working towards common
goal, and continuous support of the tutors were key
motivational aspects for all interns to give their best to
reach the goals set by the client and overcome all
challenges.
With all applications handed in, students had a great
sense of satisfaction, conscious that the job was done, and
felt prepared for following the road knowing what to
expect from the field. Interns with the best overall
performance were invited to remain at CESAR, while
others were hired by other companies immediately after
the end of the program.
Acknowledgements
Results presented in this work were part of a collaboration
between CESAR and SIDI (Samsung Instituto de
Desenvolvimento para a Informática), sponsored by
Samsung Eletrônica da Amazônia Ltda., using financial
resources from the Brazilian Law of Informatics, number
8.248/91. We would like to thank Urbano Chagas for the
support.
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