Suppose I am the president of the Association for the Development of Fair Tuitions (ADFT), which has provincial chapters and members all over Canada. To increase our efficiency in supporting our message we need better means of communications within the executive and with our members. Also, we need to enable data access to support local organizers. Thus, I would like to consult with you regarding the following projects:
1. ADFT Communications within the executive: The executive committee's mandate is to oversee and direct all activities of the organization. In order to do this the executive needs to meet regularly (at least once per month) for final discussions and to vote on motions brought forward to the committee. As the executive members are distributed throughout Canada and our organization does not have a lot of money we need a cost efficient to way to hold these executive meetings and to deliberate on new motions between the meetings. The results of the deliberations have to be conveyed to the members and need to be archived for further reference.
2. ADFT Online member database: A basic tool we need is a database of members and related data. This database must be accessible to local organizers and be secure in terms of data integrity and privacy concerns.
3. Integrated Assignment Manager: RFP
Objectives: The splitting of Assignment question is done automatically, individual instructors is notified (students choose the most suitable option). Grades and (electronically) marked assignments are submitted by instructors and automatically compiled by system which provides a grade/comment interface.
I can expand this into a scenario, with a paperless twist on what we are already doing. The students should interview all stakeholders: students, regular instructors, guest instructors and the program coordinator to define a set of specifications/features to meet.
4. Online Faculty Reading List: RFP
It would be nice to have a system with a back-end, user comments and rating, new submissions etc. Includes interfaces for users, contributors and editors. Whether they write something from scratch or wing it from existing solutions is up to them.
5. Evolution game: I would like to develop a simple client / server evolution game for teaching purposes, most likely using Java or _maybe_ Processing (see www.processing.org). More detail is available online.
6. Web service interface: Students could also develop a simple Web interface that allows interactions with the genomic web service I am currently creating. Essentially we would want to translate a user's selections (through radio buttons, etc.) into an SQL query that is fired off to the remote database, then present the query results. You could see what I mean by trying out some queries at http://emu.imb.uq.edu.au.
7. Online support for a Web Development course: Details
8. Wheelchair training using WebCT: RFP
9. Lab statistics: Extract data from our LDAP server to provide our technical support team with important information. Common queries include
10. Video Tutorials: Under the guidance of the webmaster, create video tutorials relating to the FCS similar to http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~comeau/tutorials/ The videos will need to be formatted to be viewable on an iPod, presenting additional creative challenges.
11. Learning Centre Tool: Create a form that will allow Learning Centre TA's to fill out pertinent data on their shift. We will also need manager's reports that then interpret the data as needed by the Learning Centre manager. These tools will need to be built using the existing Portal infrastructure.
12. Online Publication List: As researchers in a University, we are responsible for keeping our Web pages up to date. One of the most important pieces of information on a research website is the publication list. This is notoriously hard to maintain because it changes so frequently, and needs to reflect the output of a group of people rather than an individual. A straight-up HTML approach does not work very well. We need a method for storing academic citations, and automatically updating a Web page to reflect changes. A good approach would be to have individuals use a Web interface to update a database, which in turn updates an html page. The project could be implemented in PHP, javascript, or a similar language.