The WINE Lab: Additional Info

Report to NSF, June 1999

Project Participants

What people have worked on your project?
- Craig E. Wills, David Finkel, Robert E. Kinicki, Matthew O. Ward, George T. Heineman, David C. Brown, Isabel Cruz
What other organizations have been involved as partners?
Have you had other collaborators or contacts?

Activities and Findings

This section will serve as your report to your program officer of your project's activities and findings. Please describe what you have done and what you have learned, broken down into four categories:

Describe the major research and education activities of the project.

The Webware, Interfaces and Networking Experimental Laboratory (WINE Lab) here at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) was developed in the Fall of the 1997-98 academic year to help change the way in which the topics of computer networks, user interfaces and webware are viewed and taught. The objective in developing the WINE Lab is to improve these three courses by providing students with the opportunity to complete projects, experiment with relevant techniques and make connections between topics that would not be possible in a general purpose computing environment.

The premise for creating the lab is that students not only need to understand the important concepts in each domain, but students need to better understand the effects of the interaction between the domains. Computer networking and user interfaces are two traditional areas of our discipline and ones in which we offer a junior/senior level course. We see the need to change the way in which we view and teach the topics of computer networks and user interfaces. Students not only need to understand the important concepts in each domain, but students need to better understand the effects of the interaction between the two domains. With more interactive applications and a multitude of interaction devices, computer networks must handle network traffic that is more varied in its type, amount and quality of service needs. With computer networks potentially separating the user, interface and underlying application, the design of user interfaces must take into account network delays as well as interfaces to special-purpose devices only available over the network.

The importance of interaction between these two domains has only been heightened with the explosive growth of the World Wide Web. The Web provides a broad range of information of various types and mediums available through a single browser application. Originally the types of user interfaces available with browsers were limited, but recent developments such as Java applets and enhancements to HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) allows browsers to provide more sophisticated interfaces. The growth of the Web and the associated framework for development of its technology led our department to offer a junior/senior level course ``Webware: Computational Technology for Network Information Systems'' for the first time in the 1997-98 academic year.

The WINE Lab is being used by students enrolled in each of the three courses and by students choosing to use its facilities for their senior projects. The academic calendar at WPI consists of four 7-week terms with students typically taking three courses each term, each course meeting four times each week. The lab was used by two of the courses in the 1997-98AY and has been used by all three of the courses in the 1998-99AY.

Describe the major findings resulting from these activities.

At the end of the 1997-98AY, a total of 166 students who had taken one or more of the courses during the academic year were invited via electronic mail to participate in an electronic survey. Results from this survey were accumulated during the Summer of 1999. A total of 58 students took the survey. 24 of those students had taken HCI, 38 had taken Webware and 6 had taken Networks. 10 of the students had taken more than one class.

We have taken a similar survey at the end of the 1998-99AY, but have not yet accumulated the results. Results from the current survey will be accumulated and analyzed during the Summer of 1999 and included in the final report for the project.

The 1997-98AY survey focused on the WINE Lab in general and more specifically on the interaction between topics in the three courses. Results show that 78\% of all students taking the survey perceived an interaction between topics in HCI and Webware, with a similar result (79\%) for Networks and Webware topics. When asked about specific topics. students indicated that web page design, menu design, choice of color, use of icons and consideration of handicapped users were topics that interacted between HCI and Webware. Specific Networks/Webware topics listed were network protocols, network connections, client/server communication, security issues and network bandwidth. Only 31\% of respondents perceived an interaction between topics in HCI and Networks. In listing specific topics, students noted the user interface as the application layer in networking and that visualization strategies are needed for displaying network information.

Students were also asked whether their perception of the interaction between topics had increased, decreased or stayed the same based on taking one or more of the courses. Students perceived an increase in the interaction between Webware topics and those from the other two courses, while perceiving a decrease between HCI and Networks topics. Looking at the results by course taken, the Webware students perceptions increased more than for all students.

Examination of these results shows success towards of our goal of helping students better understand the interaction between topics in the domains.

Students were also asked to comment on positive and negative aspects of the lab overall. Students appreciated the opportunity to work in a dedicated laboratory with current software development tools. Students complained that the lab was too hot when filled with students and machines. They also requested longer laboratory hours, particularly near assignment due dates. These are both legitimate criticisms and we have worked to improve the working environment for the upcoming academic year.

Because computer science students at WPI do most of their work in a Unix environment, the use of Windows NT as the operating system platform in the lab received both positive and negative responses. Many students appreciated the opportunity to gain experience in this new environment; others disliked being required to work in the Windows environment, and, when given the opportunity in the second and third assignments, Webware students returned to the more familiar Unix environment. Because this lab is our first running Windows NT, it also created new system administration problems.

Describe the opportunities for training and development provided by your project.

Describe outreach activities your project has undertaken.

The PIs have been active in attending and participating in computer science education conferences where the project has been discussed with conference attendees. During the project, the PI has attended the ACM SIGCSE conference in New Orleans in 1999 and the Small College Computing Conference in Providence in 1999. Co-PI Finkel has attended the ACM ITiCSE conference in Dublin, Ireland in 1998 and the Frontiers in Education conference in Pittsburgh in 1999. He will also be attending the upcoming ACM ITiCSE conference in Krakow, Poland in the Summer, 1999 to present a paper on the Webware course using the the WINE Lab and to demonstrate a project developed using the lab facilities.

In this section, you will be asked to describe the tangible products coming out of your project. Specifically:

What have you published as a result of this work?

Journal publications

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Books or other non-periodical, one-time publications

Craig E. Wills, David C. Brown, Isabel Cruz, David Finkel, George Heineman, Robert E. Kinicki, and Matthew O. Ward. The webware, interfaces and networking experimental laboratory, February 1998. Invited presentation of NSF-supported projects at SIGCSE'98. Atlanta, GA.

David Finkel and Isabel F. Cruz, "Webware: A Course about the Web", with Isabel F. Cruz, to appear in the Proceedings of the 4th Annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (June, 1999).

Atticus Gifford, Benjamin J. Menasha and David Finkel, "The Visible Web Browser" (software demonstration), to appear in the Proceedings of the 4th Annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (June, 1999).
What Web site or other Internet site have you created?
http://www.cs.wpi.edu/Resources/WINE/
What other specific products (databases, physical collections, educational aids, software, instruments, or the like) have you developed?
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Contributions

Now we invite you to explain ways in which your work, your findings, and specific products of your project are significant. Describe the unique contributions, major accomplishments, innovations and successes of your project relative to:

the principal discipline(s) of the project;

The goals in developing the WINE Lab were to improve the three courses by providing students the opportunity to complete projects, experiment with relevant techniques and make connections between topics that would be impossible in a general purpose computing environment. The results thus far show some success in reaching these goals. We expect the lab to have more impact on students in these classes and doing projects in the coming year as faculty gain more experience with the lab's use and we have its facilities available for the entire academic year. We will be assessing the results of student surveys on use of the lab during the coming summer and academic year. We expect to write a paper on the results.
other disciplines of science or engineering;

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the development of human resources;

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the physical, institutional, or information resources that form the infrastructure for research and education; and

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other aspects of public welfare beyond science and engineering, such as commercial technology, the economy, cost-efficient environmental protection, or solutions to social problems.

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Last modified: Sep 27, 2006, 16:06 EDT