Multi-level educational experiment in distributed simulation

Giving collegiate students an opportunity to participate in a multi-faceted development project remains a goal of many computer science programs, as well as modeling and simulation educational programs. A key feature of many complex simulation studies remains that distributed systems are relied on for their implementation, yet presenting such a system to students as a project is often overwhelming. Devising a simpler architecture, which involves not only distributed hardware, but also development of simulation software, and interoperability software, is the goal of the approach described here. As a work in progress, final results are not yet available, but principles and some foundational decisions are presented, with enough details such that the effort can be reproduced by other institutions.