Posted by anderc8 on Friday, October 7, 2016 in Mobile Cloud Computing, News.

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We’ve been teaching at Vanderbilt for many years and have taught thousands of Vandy students in our on-campus courses, as well as hundreds of thousands of students around the world as part of our trans-institutional Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) specialization with Coursera and the University of Maryland. Yet until this semester, we’ve never taught a course with faculty and researchers from other parts of Vanderbilt. Thanks to the Cross-College Initiative that began this semester, however, that’s all changed.

When we created our University Course, Tackling Big Questions with Mobile Cloud Computing, our goal was to leverage this unique opportunity to foster and amplify synergies between students and faculty in the School of Engineering and many other parts of Vanderbilt. It’s increasingly clear that building and sustaining a workforce capable of developing, innovating and operating mobile cloud computing technologies is critical to achiev­ing lasting societal and economic impacts in many domains, so most students at Vanderbilt will need to learn and apply these technologies during their careers to address big questions they’ll confront.

After eight weeks of co-teaching our first University course, we’re pleased to report that it’s yielding an immersive, hands-on experience that’s deepening our collective understanding of key technologically-advanced solutions in the form of mobile apps that are connected to powerful cloud computing services. These mobile cloud computing apps are being designed and implemented by 10 highly diverse teams consisting of 11 Arts & Science students and 44 Computer Science students who are being mentored by 10 faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Nursing, the School of Law, the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering, as well as the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

During the Fall 2016 semester, the students in our University Course are working together in multidisciplinary project teams to tackle relevant, real-world problems involving mobile cloud computing technologies, including:

• Effectively engaging young people with chronic diseases and medical conditions, such as diabetes, asthma and obesity
• Creating “smarter” cities and sustainable energy platforms via an app-based transportation hub for Nashville, and remotely monitoring the safety and operations of novel sources of power, including solar, wind and natural gas
• Helping economically disadvantaged individuals bridge the digital divide to obtain better guidance on medical and legal matters

You can follow the progress being made by our project teams over the next few months by checking our blog page regularly. Later this month, we’ll host a Q&A session with several of our project teams, giving them the opportunity to explain what they’re working on and what they’ve learned thus far. By the end of this fall we’ll create a web portal with videos from each team that will explain what they accomplished this semester and how it’s impacting our community and the world at-large.

Vanderbilt has been a leader in mobile cloud computing research for years, but our expertise has heretofore been accessible largely to Computer Science students. Our University Course has given students and faculty across the university the opportunity to participate in the creation of cutting-edge innovations that address important issues. We’re all part of Vanderbilt’s community of learners and we want to share this experience with you. Please post your questions and comments below – we look forward to hearing from you!