Courses
Systems Chain
BTR490 . Investigative Research Internship
BTS530 . Major Project . Planning and Design
BTS630 . Major Project . Implementation
Other Courses
BTP600 . Design Patterns in UML
Many courses at Seneca College such as the Systems chain (requires a group project that lasts for 1 year) and BTP600 (includes a team project that lasts for the whole semester) requires that one work in groups to do the assignments. This forces the group to practice cohesive coordination and communication. Communication can include discussing problems that may arise during the assignment, clearly coordinating when and where the group will meet and deciding who will perform what part of the assignment.
Job/ Internships
I was involved in performing quality control testing for a company that develops telecom software. This job required me to communicate regularly with the developers. This included discussing bugs and problems that were found during the testing phase and talking about different ways to test the software during weekly meetings.
Teamwork
Courses
Systems Chain
BTR490 . Investigative Research Internship
BTS530 . Major Project . Planning and Design
BTS630 . Major Project . Implementation
Other Courses
BTC240 . Interpersonal Communications in Organizations
BTC340 . Business Presentations
BTC640 . Multimedia Presentations
Teamwork is required in many course assignments at Seneca College. For example the systems chain is a major team assignment lasting for a full year. It requires students to work with the same team through out the project. Also, BTC courses require us to work as a team to develop presentations. One has to be able to work in a team oriented environment to succeed in these assignments. This involves listening to other group members during group discussions and pushing others to complete their work properly and on time. I had to perform my tasks within the framework set by the team. This involved great discipline as one could not do more or less than what the team desired of you.
Job/ Internships
This summer my Coop involved me working as a developer at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). I was assigned to a team whose responsibility was developing an application for CIBC's telephone banking system. We had weekly meetings to discuss project deadlines and set future goals. I had to work closely with many of the developers as we were assigned many interrelated tasks.
Project Management
Courses
Systems Chain
BTR490 . Investigative Research Internship
BTS530 . Major Project . Planning and Design
BTS630 . Major Project . Implementation
At Seneca College each course requires the students to complete various projects. The largest project a student will come across during their degree takes place in the Systems courses where students must work with the same team over the course of a year to produce a final software application for a real life client. To be successful in these courses one requires various project management skills. These involve things such as deciding which team member will do what task, when the team will meet, setting internal deadlines etc. I got experience in performing all these tasks while taking part in various projects.
Job/ Internships
I was involved in performing quality control testing for a company that develops telecom software. This job required working with the developers and other quality control people. Weekly team meetings took place where various parts of the current project were discussed. My part within the team was relatively small but I was responsible for giving updates on my progress to keep the developers up to date on any new bugs.
Interests/ Life Experiences
During high school I was taking part in the International Baccalaureate program. To graduate under this program I was required to write a 4000-5000 word essay on a chosen topic. This was a major project that involved many hours of research and writing in order to complete. It was important to manage this project carefully by making sure the research was performed and analyzed long before the actual writing began. This meant having good time management skills to be able to finish this project as well as complete other assignments along with tests and exams.
Problem Solving
Courses
BTP Chain
BTP100 - Programming Fundamentals using C
BTP200 - The Object-Oriented Paradigm using C++
BTP300 - Object Oriented Software Development I - C++
BTP400 - Object-Oriented Software Development II - Java
BTP500 - Data Structures and Algorithms
BTP600 - Design Patterns in UML
The BTP chain contains the main programming courses. Each course requires us to implement various programs coded in different languages. Basically, a development problem is presented to the students and we are responsible for coming up with a solution. For example in BTP400 one of the assignments involved creating an instant messenger client and server. This required us to figure out how client server interaction works. Using that information and knowledge I created client and a server that could send information between each other.
Job/ Internships
This summer my Coop involved me working as a developer at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). I was assigned to a team whose responsibility was developing an application for CIBC's telephone banking system. My responsibility was to fix various bugs in the application. To do so I had to figure out why and how the bug was occurring. Then I had to deduce which files/lines in the source were the culprits behind the bug. In the end to fix the bug I had to have great understanding of how the application behaved in a very short period of time.