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National University of Singapore launches world’s 2nd class on Facebook application development
February 18th, 2008
| By Justin Smith | 6 Comments » |
In what could be the start of a bigger trend, the National University of Singapore (NUS) has launched a class focused on the development of applications for the Facebook Platform.
CS3216: Software Development on Evolving Platforms, taught by Ben Leong, an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing with 3 degrees from MIT, is just the second class to ever be offered on the topic after the Stanford Facebook app class last fall.
In CS3216, which just started a few weeks ago, NUS students learn principles of Platform application web development and are graded on three class projects and one final assignment. The class’s Facebook group contains several videos from recent lectures.
I spoke with Assistant Prof. Leong about his reasons for starting the class, the reception it’s received, and the experiences he’s had with the students so far.
IF: Why did you decide to create CS 3216?
BL: There are two major reasons:
a. CS3216 was inspired mainly by Randy Paush’s Last Lecture that I watched online early last semester. In his lecture, Randy talked about his class called “Creating Virtual Worlds” and I thought to myself, “Hey, that’s a really cool idea. Can we do that at NUS too? Perhaps we can put a bunch of smart and talented kids from the various majors together and see what they can do?”. Unfortunately, I am not an animation guy and I wasn’t quite enamoured with the idea of starting a new course based on Alice, so that idea was just sitting there in my head….
b. Next, I happened to be talking to folks from industry to understand their needs and I realized that one of the attributes that is important for Computer Science graduates when they get out there to the workforce is the ability to pick up new skills and abilities on-the-fly. The feedback from industry was not altogether positive. Apparently many of our local graduates are not comfortable having do stuff they had never done before in school.
So the question came up: how do we address this issue and better equip our students for the *REAL* world? It was also around at this time that I started getting Super-Poked and the popularity of Facebook application started to take off. Then it occured to me: hey, I have no idea how to write Facebook applications – if I make students write Facebook apps, it will replicate the situation of being thrown into the deep end.
The other attraction of Facebook is that many students like it and find it cool. Like Randy says, in the business of education, we’re like salesmen. We sell ideas to the students. If the students are already sold even before we start, then half the battle is already won.
IF: How would you describe the students’ response to and participation in your course?
BL: We had 80+ applicants for the course, but because we have limited teaching resources, we only offered places to 55 students. The response of the students have been overwhelmingly positive and I believe I am fortunate to have the privilege of teaching the most creative and talented class of students I have ever seen at NUS.
The quality of the apps created by the students for their one-week class assignments has far exceeded my expectations. You can find links to them at the course website and see for yourself. So far they have only completed two assignments, but by the end of next week, the third assignment will also be done and the students will be into their last lap — the Final Project.
IF: How was your class approach and curriculum influenced by the Stanford course taught by BJ Fogg and Dave McClure? How is your approach different from the Stanford course?
BL: I took a quick peek at the approach and curriculum of the Stanford course when I started designing my course. My impression is that the focus of the Stanford course is to teach students how to write apps that capture the maximum number of eyeballs (or what they call persuasive apps).
The focus of my course is quite different because our needs here are different. Classes are not created because of hype. There has to be sound pedagogical value. My goal is to train students to (i) pick up new technology quickly; (ii) work in inter-disciplinary teams; (iii) express their creativity; and (iv) pick up some industry contacts/experience. In many ways, CS3216 is probably closer to Randy Paush’s “Creating Virtual Worlds” than to the Stanford Facebook Course, even though Facebook is the common medium.
This is also reflected in the structure of the course. My understanding is that the students do two projects at Stanford. For CS3216, the students do three short 1-2 week assignments at the beginning to “get into” Facebook. Thereafter, they are allowed to do literally anything (as long as it is not illegal) for their Final Projects. I’ve brought in a bunch of folks from the industry to pitch their ideas on what they’d like to see as Facebook apps earlier in the semester — and the students are allowed to work with them. In particular, ScanScout has offered their API and up to $10k for the development of an app that meets their needs. The possibilities are limitless.
Sure, the students will get a good grade for the class if they create an app that captures a million eyeballs (‘cos that would be quite a feat in view of the current FB application fatigue), but that’s not the key focus of the class. The motto for the class is “get out there and make a difference”. How will my students do that? I leave it to them. From what I have seen so far, they are more than capable and I’m waiting to be pleasantly surprised at the end of the semester.
IF: Is Facebook the dominant social platform in Singapore? Which other platforms are students interested in developing for?
BL: Yeah, I believe so. Some people probably have Friendster and LinkedIn accounts as well, but Facebook is likely to be the dominant player here. While I do not have the statistics in terms of membership – and it is perfectly plausible that Friendster has more registered users local since it has been around longer – in terms of the current level of activity, interest, and/or participation, Facebook is quite certainly the in-thing.
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February 18th, 2008 at 3:26 am
[...] Smith from InsideFacebook wrote about our Facebook class. Thought I could let you know. He interviewed our professor, Ben Leong, [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 11:09 am
>>I took a quick peek at the approach and curriculum of the Stanford course when I started designing my course. My impression is that the focus of the Stanford course is to teach students how to write apps that capture the maximum number of eyeballs .
perhaps a little too quick
actually, the course emphasized building apps and measured them in 2 ways: both distribution *AND* user engagement. while the students’ success in distribution in a few cases was much reported on (5-6 apps had >1M users), the other metric was less noted in the press than in the class.
in addition to those 2 objectives, the class also emphasized using metrics as the primary way to guide startup decision-making in product & marketing areas. this was probably the primary thrust of the class, and was missed by most folks who weren’t involved.
along with the focus on metrics, we also brought in outside speakers from large companies, local startups, and venture / angel investors to describe their role(s) in the startup ecosystem.
anyway, don’t mean to be too defensive here but to suggest that the primary goal for our class was to build apps focused solely on acquiring users would be grossly inaccurate.
while it was certainly a result, it was not the only notable result and definitely not the solitary initial goal.
regards,
- dave mcclure
February 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am
[...] National University of Singapore is offering classes in Facebook Development. “We had 80+ applicants for the course, but because we have limited [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Dave, apologies for my sloppiness in describing your class. I had tried to explain to Justin as succinctly as possible what I perceived to be the main difference between our class and the Stanford one. Sorry for the inadvertent omission.
Yes, I am aware that you also tried teach your students to create engaging apps (which to me means keeping the eyeballs you manage to collect). Again, my apologies for not making this clear in my earlier response.
Since I probably did a lousy job expressing myself, perhaps I can try again. The fact of the matter is that eyeballs is not a major concern for me. Neither is this business of doing startups, or making money.
What I REALLY want my students to do is to get off their behinds and do something they think is cool (meaningful) and have fun learning. I am a firm believer that learning must be fun.
The are many paths to success in life — and that belief is core to CS3216. Students are allowed to decide for themselves what they believe is “cool” and do it. All they have to do is to persuade us at the end of the semester to agree with them! If they should decide that catching a million eyeballs is THE “cool” thing and set out to do that, that’s fine with me. Good for them. I wish them luck.
Given the current climate, it is my opinion that it is neither fair nor desirable to grade the students on the popularity of their apps. Technically my students are extremely capable. Some of them are definitely capable of reproducing some of the million-eyeball apps in a week or two — but it will be hard for such apps to gain traction given the fatigue and general decline in novelty. It’s not even clear to me that there’s any good way to monetize Facebook apps even if they are popular. Ads? Will people click?
Given some of the stuff that we’ve been doing for CS3216, some people might think that CS3216 is a “entrepreneurship promotion” class, i.e. that our intention is to get students to do startups. Again, that’s not true (at least not entirely).
At the highest level, my goal is education — to teach the students something. I don’t think it really matters exactly what they learn, only that they learn something and hopefully, HOW to learn.
What they learn will also depend on where they are coming from — and in CS3216 they come from many different places. In addition to your programmer types, we have Science majors, business majors, and even an MBA!
Back to the topic of entreprenuership, it is my view that not everyone should become an entreprenuer. It takes a certain type. What I try to do in CS3216 is to provide information and exposure to the students, so that they understand what it takes to be entrepreneurs and to do startups and how to look at some issues from a business perspective.
Hopefully, some of the students will be encouraged by what they see and go on to startups in Singapore, or perhaps even in the Valley. Others might be turned off from the business world and decide to seek their fortunes elsewhere. That’s fine.
There are many routes to success — and I hope that my students will each pursue their individual dreams, and not the dreams that others (or God forbid, the Government) think they should dream.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:21 am
thanks for the clarification ben, and best of luck with the class. i’m sure that there are lots of benefits to a variety of approaches to the subject matter.
also agreed that education is a laudable goal, and entrepreneurship isn’t always for everyone (altho sometimes it may take them a startup or two to figure that out
best of luck with your class!
regards,
- dave mcclure
(ps – re: making money on Facebook, i agree it’s worth looking into more seriously & not a given. that said, it seems at least a few of the student teams from our fall 07 class have figured something out — 4 of them formed LLCs to collect the ad revenue they were making, and they are looking seriously at upgrading their projects into true startups. and at least one has received a term sheet for a seed investment.)
May 19th, 2008 at 8:08 am
[...] model, work, then I invite you to check it out. Here are a few resources you can begin with: CS3216 Software development on evolving platforms course launched by NUS, and a recent report on Warring Farmers raking in fans, by [...]