Suggested Project List

Web Page Design Clients

Academy of Teaching Excellence at Virginia Tech
Contact: Prof. Monte Boisen (boisen@math.vt.edu, x17252). Design of new pages that will be linked to by the upper level Virginia Tech Web pages.
Barnette's Course Web Pages
Contact: Dwight Barnette (barnette@vt.edu). "I've got plenty of course web pages that could use a redesign."
Career Services
Contact: Michael W. Rheiner (rheiner@vt.edu). have advertised for "internships" for professional homepage development and maintenance. August 28 application deadline.
Curriculum Team of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
The Curriculum Team of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is interested in having someone author WWW pages to inform the public of their ongoing work, to disseminate information, and to provide a ready resource for MCPS educators. The *initial* contact point would be Melissa Matusevich . Please contact her if you need further information.
CS Department Web Pages
Contact: Ms. Jo-Anne Bogner (joanne@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). "I would very much like to work with someone to redesign the department's web pages (http://www.cs.vt.edu). In particular, I would like to have someone produce an imagemap main page that would direct users more specific areas of interest. I would like to extend this design to all departmental pages linked to the main page that are maintained by the department. This would probably be a fairly involved project, that may take most of the semester to complete."
Prof. Ehrich
Contact: Prof. Ehrich (ehrich@vtopus.cs.vt.edu) "I definitely have some things I need (in at least one case I have a real person in another department who need web design help)."
GPC Web Pages
Contact: Prof. Hartson (hartson@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). "The CS Dept. Graduate Program Committee (GPC) will be putting all its business on the web.... We'd love to be a "client" to get a student group to help with design and implementation of GPC web pages."
Human-Computer Interaction Research Group
Contact: Prof. Shaffer (shaffer@shaffer.cs.vt.edu) or Prof. Carroll (carroll@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). "Perhaps someone could work on the Web pages for Human-Computer Interaction work at Virginia Tech."
IEEE Region 3 Web Pages
Contact Davic Lee, dlee@vt.edu. A variety of projects possible. "There may be a dollar amount available to do these projects." This project has been taken.
Japanese Animation Club
Contact: Keith Andreano, andreak@vapo1.him.unisys.com. A club for Japanese Animation is forming in the Washington DC area and they want a web page to advertise the group. I know the person that is trying to set up this club and a free web page is just what they need (it's a non-profit group). [Would be a nice opportunity to include animation in a Web page!]
MAD Center
Contact Bernard Grossman, AOE department head. The MAD Center in AOE needs some Web page work done. (From Prof. Watson)
Northern Virginia Graduate Center Computer Science Forms
Contact: Prof. Frakes, grakes@vtopus.cs.vt.edu. "i would like to see the student forms at the nova cs web page made interactive. have the students contact me if interested."
Phi Beta Kappa
Contact: Sandy Birch (birch@cs.vt.edu). Requested help in designing Web pages. Ms. Birch is the secretary for the campus chapter.
Residential & Dining Programs -- Creative/Innovative Project
Contact: Ron Angert, 540-231-6819, rangert@vt.edu. "I am the network administrator for Residential & Dining Programs and we have need for implementation of several medium size web interface applications that would give a student or two some practical applications to code. Our server is on NT (Netscape server at the moment), but I am considering going to a Unix box for Web/Mail/FTP and listserve. If you have students looking to do some work locally, please give me a call and I will fill you in on the details. These applications have not been desgned, only defined, so the students would be able to apply innovation and creativity. "
Roanoke Valley Women's Bowling Axxociation
Contact: Ms. Laurie Zirkle (lat@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). "I have set of web pages for the Roanoke Valley Women's Bowling Association that i set up on csgrad. When I set them up, I didn't have a lot of time to do anything fancy. They are already publicly accessible thru a number of links, since i did this over a year ago. If someone is interested in redesigning them to make them "jazzier" without overdoing it (like some web pages are), you are more than welcome to use them. They are located at: http://csgrad.cs.vt.edu/~lat/RVWBA/rvwba.html with the latest information i have. They could redesign them somewhere else, then I could replace the ones I have. I'm also in the process of creating one for the Roanoke Bowling Association with the same format as the other one."
Student Affairs
Contact: Sharon Yeagle (syeagle@vt.edu). Needs maintenance of Web pages.
Student Health
Contact: Jon (healthed@vt.edu). Requested help in designing Web pages. Have advertised internships.
Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, Inc. (VTIP)
Contact: Kaye Kriz, kkriz@vt.edu Click here to view the current Web pages for VTIP. The market for the pages are VT faculty, staff, student (individuals or businesses) "inventors", invention disclosures that have been registered w/VTIP, and finally, potential licensees of these inventions, patents, products by industries. One requirement for redesign is to improve content and functionality, including ease of use and (relatively) fast access, which are more important than cool graphics, etc. The only urgent graphics piece we have now is to enhance the VTIP logo that appears on some of the pages. A second requirement is to enhance the search facility. Search is currently done via gopher, specifically "gn". I did this because it provided a database-like search capability that I could get implemented in a short time. To do this, most of the VTIP web site resides in filebox, while the disclosures reside on negaduck in order to allow the gn search. I think they would prefer their site to reside on *one* server which would support the more expansive capabilities of the Web. And no, I don't mean VRML or gyrating gifs, etc. I also think they would prefer a site that they could "download" and use locally, as an "intranet", e.g., for presentations where they do not have access to ethernet. But that is *not* a key requirement. Some ideas that could be implemented:
  • disclosure database & interface create an application that gives more database functionality to their "disclosures", i.e., add/modify/delete records, search, report, using forms interface;
  • (industrial) licensee database & interface create a forms interface for industries to "register" as potential licensees; put the data from the registration into a (potential) licensee database; allow query,search & report capabilities of that database to VTIP-authorised users, (@vt.edu and otherwise)
  • inventor database & interface a forms interface for inventor "registration"; reference the "Intellectual Property Roadmap" in the current web site, which explains the process of registering an invention w/VTIP, going the patent route, etc.

In some cases (but not all), user authentication would be desirable, if not required. Access outside the @vt.edu domain would be required.

Young Audiences of Virginia, Inc.
Contact: Luci Talbot, 804-466-7555. Young Audiences is a non-profit arts-in-education group in Norfolk and Richmond that have requested Web page design. The organization schedules performances for a variety of artists (e.g., dance, symphany, plays) to appear at schools. There should be a lot of opportunity for graphical, lively Web pages!

Web Application Clients

CS Dept. On-Line Pre-Application Form for Grad Students
Contact: Prof. Heath (heath@cs.vt.edu). "Something that I have proposed is an online form that might be called a pre-application. A prospective applicant would enter information on his or her educational background, any reasearch or other outstanding accomplishments, as well as GRE and TOEFL scores, etc. Once GPC has the information, it could give feedback to the prospect as to whether it is worth his or her while to submit an application. In case of a really strong potential applicant, GPC could actively recruit him or her as early in the year as possible. This cuts out the graduate school processing time that frequently costs us a decent shot at strong applicants. The actual client for such a pre-application might be the graduate school, so that any department at Virginia Tech could take advantage of this capability."
Online Scheduling System
Contact: Prof. Barnette (barnette@vt.edu). "An application which allows students to ask for appointments with instructors over the Web. The student accesses a Java applet over the Web which updates a schedule file on the instructors server. Each student looks at the same copy of the schedule and it is updated on- line. Students have to enter a password and PID combination to update the schedule online."

Details: The Java applet must interface with some kind of program on the server side which has privileges to do disk I/O on the server machine. Implementation Issues: What if more that one user logs on at the same time? The application must show the same data on all the persons logged in. The Java applet must be able to update some document on the server which holds the schedule file.

Hypercard Emulation on the Web
Contact: Prof. Lee (janlee@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). "I have some Hypercard emulators of historical machines that I would like to transport to the WWW. I.e. a Turing Machine, Chessboard Calculator, Enigma encyphering machine,..."
Intersection of Java, Visualization, Simulation
Contact: Prof. Ron Kriz (kriz@wave.esm.vt.edu) Has a project that interests Javasoft and Netscape, and is looking for students to help write some Java applets.
TeX to Web
Contact: Prof. Watson (ltw@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). I need homework notes put on the Web; the challenge is to deal with TEX equations in a reasonable way. [The problem is easy for LaTeX, due to latextohtml, but no such tool exists for TeX.]
Usability of Web Page Designs #1
Contact: Prof. Dzida (dzida@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). "I am preparing a couse on Quality Assurance which was originally not planned to be offered on web pages. However, if a team of students would be interested in web pages design, I can offer some ideas and material and last but not least an opportunity for the students to investigate usability issues of web pages design. A project suitable for students?" [Note: Prof. Dzida will leave VPI in December.]
Usability of Web Page Designs #2
>Contact: Prof. Hartson (hartson@vtopus.cs.vt.edu). A student could get a start on the following: HCI-Oriented Masters Student To Do Thesis Involving:

This goal of this research is to determine empirically the effects (good and bad) of using the Web to deliver course materials. We are interested in knowing more about how the Web materials are being used by students and why. Most data logging techniques lack a means for explaining patterns observed, leaving the explanations to theory or conjecture. This work will build a method to close the loop by including instructors and students in the cycle of inquiry. We expect the result to be a significant contribution to data logging as an evaluation technique.

Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, Inc. (VTIP)
Contact: Kaye Kriz, kkriz@vt.edu Java-based tools for their Web site are required. See the VTIP description under the Web Page Design for more on VTIP's Web page requirements.
WWW Grade Checking Program
Contact: Prof. Barnette (barnette@vt.edu). "Overview: A Java applet which allows students to check their grades over the Web by going to a web site (which is served by the instructor). The applet and the grades are on the instructors server and can only be accessed by entering the correct password and PID combination. The password and PID combination are verified from the Virginia Tech authentication server, so it shouldn't violate the Buckley amendment.

Details: The student runs the Java applet on their computer. The student then types their PID and password and the applet authenticates them. If the PID and password combination is invalid, the student can't see their grades. If it is valid the student gets their grade and the applet also generates a histogram which shows their performance relative to the rest of the class. Implementation Issues: How do we perform the authentication?


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