Using a multiple term project to teach object oriented programming and design

One important concern of industry is that software engineering students have little or no experience in coming up to speed on a substantial existing software project. Indeed, the typical project course in academe tends to be soup to nut: problem statement to requirements to design to code. Many courses omit some of these steps or the instructors may provide some parts. At Rensselaer we´ve designed a project that lives beyond the scope of any single semester. The Stooge project began in 1996 in a section of our object oriented programming and design course and has been enhanced by the students of that course every semester since. We present some of the lessons learned in teaching such a course.