Penn CIS 400 - Virtual Collaboration Room

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AbstractRelated WorkUsage ScenariosFeaturesTechnical ApproachOverview:Implementation Areas:AssessmentConclusionReferencesGlossaryApril 11, 2005 Final Project Description Virtual Collaboration Room Olga Ivanova ([email protected]) Muhammad Bilal Aslam ([email protected]) Advisor: Dr. Zachary Ives I. Abstract At most educational institutions, faculty and students rely on computers to do their everyday tasks. Moreover, faculty members like to publish documents and announcements on web sites for students. Plain web sites are difficult to maintain and do not allow students to collaborate. Most importantly, it is difficult to control access and grant different levels of permission to various users of a plain web site. Our solution will allow users to create Virtual Collaboration Rooms in which they can securely manage folders and permissions, upload files, participate in discussions etc. It will consist of a .NET client which will communicate to a SQL / IIS back-end via XML Web Services over HTTP. Major goals of our project are: (1) to create a pleasant collaborative experience for non-computer-savvy users via an application that runs on their PCs and (2) to investigate and implement a Collaborative Filtering technique to rank and expose important discussions to users as announcements. Figure 1 shows our senior project design approach, outlining the major areas of this final project description (numbers in boxes indicate sections in this paper): II. ExamineexistingproductsII. Pinpoint areas of improvementIV. Select features for projectV. Technical DesignV. ImplementationandDebuggingVI. AssessmentIII. Create usagescenarios for areasof improvement Figure 1: Project design cycle and its relation to this paper’s sections 1April 11, 2005 Final Project Description II. Related Work WebCafé1 (actively used by Wharton): • Users can only login via a website. IE / Netscape browser plug-in provides drag-and-drop functionality into WebCafe from Windows desktop. However, most students cannot install ActiveX plug-in on locked-down school terminals because it modifies the Windows registry and persists logins, which is a security risk. • Key Features: o Relatively user-friendly Windows Explorer-like UI (strangely, there is no logout button!) o Document upload, download, version-tracking o Discussion boards o User-level and role-level permissions o Chat (which does not work), polls, project scheduling etc. Blackboard2 (used by College & SEAS): • Users can only login via a website • Key Features: o Somewhat complicated UI o Challenging to manage course sites (based on personal responses from instructors) o Most of the features of WebCafé but much slower response o A lot of extra functionality (such as voice messaging) which most people are either unaware of or do not need Open Source Projects: These projects currently provide basic file and folder management and user permissions. Notable open source examples include Stanford Coursework3, Chef Project4 and Sakai Project5. Other closed or commercial systems: These systems are similar to WebCafé, but focus on e-learning rather than collaboration. These systems include WebCT6, Lotus Workplace Collaborative Learning7 and Stellar Course Management System8. 1 http://webcafe.wharton.upenn.edu/hosting/compare.html http://webcafe.wharton.upenn.edu/pages/overview.html http://webcafe.wharton.upenn.edu 2 http://courseweb.upenn.edu 3 http://aboutcoursework.stanford.edu 4 http://www.chefproject.org 5 http://www.sakaiproject.org 6 http://www.webct.com 7 http://www.lotus.com/products/product5.nsf/wdocs/lwclhomepage 8 http://stellar.mit.edu 2April 11, 2005 Final Project Description Areas of Improvement: 1. Improved user experience: a. .NET application will provide familiar Windows UI conventions and controls such as drag-and-drop, toolbars etc. b. Faster response to user requests because .NET client will take on some of the server’s work such as interface rendering c. Simply launch from desktop instead of having to visit and navigate a web site d. Not having to use Internet Explorer and suffer from its occasional crashes; parties who do not officially support IE (such as Penn) will be able to use our solution e. Unlike the WebCafé plug-in, our client will require a single login every time the client application is launched, thus it can be installed on publicly-used computers. It will also not modify the Windows registry, so it can be easily deployed as a ‘light’ .NET assembly over the Internet. 2. Improved features: a. Announcements will be exposed on the Home Page when user logs in. Only authorized members (such as instructors) will be able to post announcements. Some announcements such as those about exams or frequently seen posts (see below) will be generated automatically. Also highest rated discussions will be promoted to announcements. b. Discussion Boards will be threaded. Collaborative Filtering will allow VCR to rank posts in a discussion by some priority metric e.g. by number of times post viewed by other students. Moreover, the highest priority discussions will be exposed on the Overview Page as announcements. III. Usage Scenarios From our user studies of SEAS undergraduates, Wharton MBA students and Wharton WebCafé team as well as the review of existing products discussed above, most common tasks performed by users of collaborative software are participating in discussions and sharing files in a secure manner. Most users stated that they read discussions to collaborate on homework problems, find out about exams and ask the professor questions. Users of systems such as WebCafé mentioned that it’s tedious to browse through discussions every day for ‘important’ topics such as exam announcements. Some users mentioned that it would be useful to access these discussions separately through their e-mail software or through RSS aggregators. Also, as project-based assignments become more popular, groups of students like to share assignment files with their team members. All users mentioned that it is important to be able to restrict access to shared files so other competing teams cannot see each other’s solutions. Professors want to post exams, homework and answers in a secure manner to prevent solutions to problem sets from leaking on to the Internet. Lastly, professors and administrators need the ability to add and remove users


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