We'd need to be closely involved with a 'client', basically someone who wouldn't mind the overhead of laying down some goals and stuff and who would be willing to interact (though not handhold or anything near it) throughout the process. Many larger open source projects have these kinds of people already (specifically David Humphrey at Mozilla).

More generally though, I believe this to be a good way of getting college students more involved in open source projects, and wouldn't be surprised if other HN students jumped at the opportunity, so feel free to comment if you're also an interested student.

That said, if you'd like more information about myself and my friend (to make sure you're not wasting your time) or about the minor and related courses at my school, feel free to email me ([email protected])

Edited to add: We're talking about small groups of students as part of a class. In this case, we're referring to two students, but one can imagine groups of 2-5.