University of TorontoDepartment of Computer Science:A Feasibility StudyPrepared for:Michail Flouris, CSC340 TAFebruary 4, 2002Prepared by:Amit A. KaulArvin KambojLawrence Llaguno2Table of Contents:Feasibility StudyIntroduction 3Understanding the Current System 3Scope of the Study 4Users 5Problems 8Objectives and Requirements 10Comparison Criteria 11Alternatives 13Alternative Analysis 15Summary of Findings 21Recommendations 23Conclusion 23AppendicesAppendix A: Screenshots 24Appendix B: CDF Administrator Interview 28Appendix C: Survey Tools 30Appendix D: Survey Data – Professors 34Appendix E: Survey Data - Teaching Assistants 38Appendix F: Survey Data - Students 42Appendix G: Detailed Explanation of Cost/Benefit Analysis 55Appendix H: Information Flow 56Appendix I: Glossary 57Appendix J: Team Report Form 583Introduction:Organization DescriptionThe Department of Computer Science (DCS) at the University of Toronto was the firstcomputer science department established in Canada. In a recent study it was rated theforemost Canadian computer science department and among the best in North America.Fields of study include Information Systems, Computer Science, Software Engineering,Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. Manyprograms combine another field with computer science, such as Economics,Mathematics, Physics or Statistics. The DCS offers the latest equipment and software tostudents. On all three campuses (St. George, Erindale, Scarborough) PC and UNIXworkstation environments support the growing computing needs of all undergraduate andgraduate courses.The introduction of the World Wide Web has revolutionized the face of education. It is arich source of information for students, lecturers, researchers, and professionals. It allowsus to get information quickly and effectively. It has been embraced world wide as auniversal means of communication. Therefore, for our study we chose to analyze theDepartment of Computer Science web system. We will discuss possible alternativesolutions to the current system and determine which solution is the best.Understanding the Current System:Currently all computing support for undergraduate courses in the Department ofComputer Science is provided by the Computing Disciplines Facility (CDF). In order tounderstand the current CDF infrastructure, we interviewed CDF System AdministratorLloyd Smith (See Appendix B). Lloyd is the Lead Administrator for the CDF-PCenvironment and is heavily involved with all aspects of CDF administration and usersupport. He was able to give our group valuable insight regarding the CDF infrastructureand users.CDF hardware support consists of three Sun Solaris workstation laboratories, one Linuxworkstation laboratory, and two Microsoft Windows-based PC laboratories. All access tothe CDF system, including any CDF applications, is granted through user accounts.Students are issued user accounts to the system under two circumstances:(a) Students enrolled in a Computer Science undergraduate program may request apermanent user account, which is deployed by the system administrators.(b) Students without a permanent account are issued user accounts on a per-student-per-course basis, which are removed from the system upon completion of thecourse.Support for web initiatives in the Computer Science department is also provided by theCDF. Undergraduate course websites are stored on CDF servers. CDF system4administrators deploy and administer storage space on these web servers. It is importantto note that all content on individual course web pages is created and maintained solelyby the professor or teaching assistants.Currently there is a main portal for the online CDF community, which exists athttp://www.cdf.utoronto.edu (See Appendix A – Figures 1 & 2). Among other options,the current interface allows students to access a list of course websites for allundergraduate and graduate courses in the department. As the content is created andmaintained by the professor, added functionality is included at their discretion. Currentcourse website functionality includes; course syllabi, announcements, lecture materials,assignment information, course standing, sample tests, CDF account listings, andscheduling information for important dates.CDF also maintains a news server with individual newsgroups for each course. Thenewsgroups provide a forum for individuals involved with the course to communicate(See Appendix A – Figure 6). Students use the newsgroup to ask questions, which arethen answered by professors, teaching assistants, and other students. Some professors usethe newsgroup to communicate announcements and other course related information. Thenewsgroup service is a stand-alone system, which is not incorporated into the coursewebsite, both being independent of one another.In addition to the CDF Home Page, there exists a CDF online information system withlimited functionality. The application is located at https://www.cdf.utoronto.ca/students(See Appendix A – Figure 3 & 4). This system contains functionality for the onlinesubmission of assignments. Professors update the information system with assignmentdeadline information so that students may submit their assignments from the internet. Thesystem mimics the functionality of the assignment submission tool available to usersworking in the CDF laboratories.There also exists a CDF tool in which the professors can enter their course marks, whichare automatically formatted and submitted to the DCS. This tool was created by thesystem administrators to simplify the process of submitting course grades and ensure thatthey are in an acceptable format. This tool is a stand-alone application, operatingindependently of any of the aforementioned systems.Scope of the Study:The scope of this study will be limited to the means of communication between membersof the DCS, specifically the undergraduate course web pages, newsgroups and email. Themain focus of our analysis will be related to integration, standardization andsimplification. The current system involves the use of multiple tools and formats. Somemay not consider this to be a problem, however it is clear that integrating, standardizingand simplifying will save time.5The reason for limiting our study to undergraduate computer science
View Full Document
Unlocking...