Led by faculty member Steve Huss-Lederman, students at Beloit College are developing the Open Energy Dashboard, an open source energy monitoring dashboard for use by organizations to monitor their energy usage. An NPFI grant has been awarded to Beloit to help Professor Huss-Lederman teach the 2018-2019 capstone software development course as his students further extend and customize OED to fit a wider range of needs among its client group.
OED is free open source software, so it can be downloaded and customized by other organizations. It is a refreshing alternative to the proprietary energy dashboards that are commercially available. Students in the class will work with the client Central College to help guide their work.
The capstone course at Beloit is required for the CS major and this year it expects to enroll 20-25 students. The course’s prerequisites ensure that the students enrolling will be well-prepared to succeed. The syllabus is organized to fit both the needs of the students and the needs of the OED project. In particular, its emphasis on database principles in the first semester provides preparation for the project that is missing in earlier CS courses.
NPFI is especially interested in supporting this project because it exceeds NPFI’s traditional CO-FOSS model in three significant ways: 1) the course spans 2 semesters rather than one, 2) the class size is larger than that of a 4-6 student team, and 3) the project has two or more specific clients with similar needs rather than one. We congratulate Prof. Huss-Lederman on this work and we look forward to learning about the outcomes of this course at it unfolds.