STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

SUNYIT Computer Science Department's Learning Community Portal

Amos Confer, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor)

Chris Urban (Lecturer)

SUNYIT Department of Computer and Information Sciences

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Agenda

• A little history• Driving forces• Ultimate goal• Proof of concept• Future efforts

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

A Little History

• Gerald Weinberg's book, "The Psychology of Computer Programming" published in 1971– Despite their reputation as loners, programmers

really need the chance to interact with one another… the more informal the setting, the better."Watercooler effect" story from the bookThis results in the development of "groupware"

• We believe this is extensible to all technology students– Perhaps extensible to all students

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Driving Forces (1)

• Individual students often learn material differently than the way material is taught

• Many students learn from each other• There is currently no "official" IT mechanism to

enable and promote student-to-student learning• Also no "official" IT mechanism to archive

teaching/learning material

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Driving Forces (2)

• Why not include faculty?– Greater engagement– New feedback loop

• Why not include alumni? – Enable engagement – Another new feedback loop

• ACM requirements for student chapter

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Ultimate Goal

• Develop an IT tool that enables and maintains learning "communities of practice" for individual courses

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Proof of Concept (1st attempt)

• Web directory listing• Trusted students/admins upload documents w/

naming convention for files and directories• Content can be…

– hierarchically browsed (web)– searched by students from a terminal

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Proof of Concept (1st attempt)

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Proof of Concept (2nd attempt/current)

• Database generated pages per document• Any student/faculty can upload documents w/ basic

field data via browser• Documents can be…

– posted anonymously w/ credentials– hierarchically browsed– searched by field– amended with forum-style posts– Automatically cross-referenced

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Proof of Concept (2nd attempt/current)

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Proof of Concept (2nd attempt/current)

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Proof of Concept (2nd attempt/current)

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Future Efforts

• Move past “social commentary” to “social presentation”– “Follow” topics / documents– Collaborative notebooks / scrapbooking– E.g., Pintrest, Instagram, Vine

• LDAP integration• Add CMS plugin framework to support embedded…

– Wiki, video, white boarding, avatars, etc• Package as open source

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORKINSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

AT UTICA/ROME

Questions?

• Ask anything…