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About this site

Info x300 server rebuild

Client

Phoebe Sengers, Associate Professor, Science & Technology Studies and Computing and Information Science
(607) 254-5396
sengers@cs.cornell.edu

CS 5150 contact

Kevin Tse <kt328@cornell.edu>

The project

Every year, 200 students and 15-20 TAs use the Info 1300/2300 web server to support the introductory Information Science course sequence. The server was built with a great deal of love and supports (in our opinion) much better course functionality than the Blackboard site. At the same time, the code base has accrued over time. As a consequence, the interface is starting to feel outdated and the stuff "under the hood" is held together in places by the software equivalent of duct tape and safety pins, and this duct-tape-ness is leading to stability issues. This software engineering project is to redesign and -implement the server for these courses. On successful completion the code will be used by hundreds of students going through the Information Science program.

Technical information

Back end: PHP + MySQL
Front end: XHTML Strict + CSS

What the server supports - or should support

• Communication of basic course information (syllabus, grading policy, office hours, etc.), including an interface to upload this anew every semester
• Social networking / communication functionality including polls, forums, announcements, final project groups, email to class, file downloads (e.g. lecture notes)
• Support for assignments, including allowing students to upload and view their work on the server, grading tools, assignment creation
• Support for multiple kinds of users (students vs. TAs vs professors) with different access to the functionality of the site
• Security, partially to prevent students from being able to copy each other's homework, but very importantly also to prevent hackers from taking down the server (this happened to our previous course server)