Developing an undergraduate distributed development course

This paper describes the curricular development and implementation of an undergraduate distributed application engineering course. The course was created in response to overwhelming demand by students and faculty to integrate material on Internet and world wide web technologies into a traditional computer science curriculum. The goal of the course is to give students a solid understanding of the components of a distributed application and the ability to use this knowledge to solve real world problems. The course uses active learning, standards and cross-platform techniques to focus on core principles that facilitate continued learning and integration of advances. Specific technologies used in the course are a means and not an end Student progress is measured by a progressive programming project, quizzes and an exam. The material is grouped into four main sections: web site design and implementation, client-side processing, server-side processing and server management. The overall result is a comprehensive course that progressively covers distributed development from the client to the server.