Matching Items (13)
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- All Subjects: Computer Science
- All Subjects: Software
- Creators: Balasooriya, Janaka
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Despite the advancement of online tools for activities related to the core experience of taking classes on a college campus, there has been a relatively small amount of research into implementing online tools for ancillary academic resources (e.g. tutoring centers, review sessions, etc.). Previous work and a study conducted for this paper indicates that there is value in creating these online tools but that there is value in maintaining an in-person component to these services. Based on this, a system which provides personalized, easily-accessible, simple access to these services is proposed. Designs for user-centered online-tools that provides access to and interaction with tutoring centers and review sessions are described and prototypes are developed to demonstrate the application of design principles for online tools for academic services.
ContributorsBerk, Nicholas Robert (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
Web-application development constantly changes \u2014 new programming languages, testing tools and programming methodologies are often proposed. The focus of this project is on the tool Selenium and the fairly new technique known as High Volume Automated Testing (HVAT). Both of these techniques were used to test the Just-in-Time Teaching and Learning Classroom Management System software. Selenium was used with a black-box testing technique and HVAT was employed in a white-box testing technique. Two of the major functionalities of this software were examined, which include the login and the professor functionality. The results of the black-box testing technique showed parts of the login component contain bugs, but the professor component is clean. HVAT white-box testing revealed error free implementation on the code level. We present an analysis on a new technique for HVAT testing with Selenium.
ContributorsEjaz, Samira (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Committee member) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
A common challenge faced by students is that they often have questions about course material that they cannot ask during lecture time. There are many ways for students to have these questions answered, such as office hours and online discussion boards. However, office hours may be at inconvenient times or locations, and online discussion boards are difficult to navigate and may be inactive. The purpose of this project was to create an Alexa skill that allows users to ask their Alexa-equipped device a question concerning their course material and to receive an answer retrieved from discussion board data. User questions are mapped to discussion board posts by use of the cosine similarity algorithm. In this algorithm, posts from the discussion board and the user’s question are converted into mathematical vectors, with each term in the vector corresponding to a word. The values of these terms are computed based on the word’s frequency within the vector’s corresponding document, the frequency of that word within all the documents, and the length of the document. After the question and candidate posts are converted into vectors, the algorithm determines the post most similar to the user’s question by computing the angle between the vectors. With the most similar discussion board post determined, the user receives the replies to the post, if any, as their answer. Users are able to indicate to their Alexa device whether they were satisfied by the answer, and if they were unsatisfied then they are given the opportunity to either rephrase their question or to have the question sent to a database of unanswered questions. The professor can view and answer the questions in this database on a website hosted by use of Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. The Alexa skill does well at answering questions that have already been asked in the discussion board. However, the skill depends heavily on the user’s word choice. Two questions that are semantically identical but different in phrasing are often given different answers. This is because the cosine algorithm measures similarity on the basis of word overlap, not semantic meaning, and thus the application never truly “understands” what type of answer the user desires. Improving the performance of this Alexa skill will require a more advanced question answering algorithm, but the limitations of Amazon Web Services as a development platform make implementing such an algorithm difficult. Nevertheless, this project has created the basis of a question answering Alexa skill by demonstrating a feasible way that the resources offered by Amazon can be utilized in order to build such an application.
ContributorsBaker, Matthew Elias (Author) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis director) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Charleston, South Carolina currently faces serious annual flooding issues due to tides and rainfall. These issues are expected to get significantly worse within the next few decades reaching a projected 180 days a year of flooding by 2045 (Carter et al., 2018). Several permanent solutions are in progress by the City of Charleston. However, these solutions are years away at minimum and faced with development issues. This thesis attempts to treat some of the symptoms of flooding, such as navigation, by creating an iPhone application which predicts flooding and helps people navigate around it safely. Specifically, this thesis will take into account rainfall and tide levels to display to users actively flooded areas of downtown Charleston and provide routing to a destination from a user’s location around these flooded areas whenever possible.
ContributorsSalisbury, Mason (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Faucon, Christophe (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Since the release of Discord in March of 2015 it has become the choice VoIP client for 25 million users, pulling in more each day from many sources including online video games with no voice chat, such as League of Legends. With such an expansive user base and many servers hosting multiple users during all times of the day, for a server admin to always be monitoring users is unreasonable. AhriBot aims to solve this problem by providing general administration through a command system to a server while it is logged onto that server. Specifically, AhriBot will be tailored for use on servers where League of Legends is primarily being played. Using commands issued to AhriBot, users can get statistics about their current game. By providing a set of features for general users, and a more specific set of features for League of Legends, AhriBot provides a greater experience and will help players to have quicker access to information about the game without having to travel to multiple outside sources.
ContributorsKoehler, Brendan Joseph (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Faucon, Philippe (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
CDA is a mobile application that helps students, specifically those without a mentor, break into the competitive investment banking industry. Investment banking is arguably one of the most competitive industries to break into because it is widely viewed as the premier finance career available out of undergraduate school. The industry is unique in the sense that there are many unwritten rules on how to break into the industry. The large investment banks receive tens of thousands of applications every year, but only an extremely small percentage of those applications are viewed. This is a problem for a majority of students, who believe that simply having a high GPA and a passion for finance and submitting an application is adequate to get into investment banking. Many students who successfully make it into the industry are provided with programs and mentors to teach them everything necessary to do so, but I have noticed that there are many other qualified students that are not given these resources and are, accordingly, not as successful getting into the industry. This application is designed to provide some of the custom mentorship advice necessary to get into investment banking. I will approach this project as a business venture and will develop methods to monetize the services this program provides.
ContributorsRasmussen, Parker John (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Bennett, Jack (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
ContributorsShah, Beejal (Author) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Thesis director) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Committee member) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Due to its difficult nature, organic chemistry is receiving much research attention across the nation to develop more efficient and effective means to teach it. As part of that, Dr. Ian Gould at ASU is developing an online organic chemistry educational website that provides help to students, adapts to their responses, and collects data about their performance. This thesis creative project addresses the design and implementation of an input parser for organic chemistry reagent questions, to appear on his website. After students used the form to submit questions throughout the Spring 2013 semester in Dr. Gould's organic chemistry class, the data gathered from their usage was analyzed, and feedback was collected. The feedback obtained from students was positive, and suggested that the input parser accomplished the educational goals that it sought to meet.
ContributorsBeerman, Eric Christopher (Author) / Gould, Ian (Thesis director) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Mosca, Vince (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
It is important for organizations and businesses to have some kind of online presence, as there are enormous benefits, including utilizing the power of web languages to provide services for people. However, creating a website is difficult, and often expensive. While successful businesses can use their profits to develop a costly website, organizations are not so lucky and can't afford to pay large amounts of money for theirs. Thus, the goal of this project was to provide a complete website to the Card Trick Quilters organization found in Show Low, Arizona. The website serves as both a learning experience, to see exactly what it takes to construct a website from the ground up, and a service project that will provide the Card Trick Quilters with a website that performs various services for its members, with functionality that is completely unique to the Arizona quilting community at large. The creation of the website required learning several different skills in regards to web design, such as databases, scripting languages, and even elements of graphic design. The uniqueness of the website comes from the creation of an online submission form for the annual quilt show hosted by the quilters, and an email reminder system where members of the community can submit their addresses and receive emails when there is an upcoming meeting. While there will no doubt be changes and improvements to the website in the future, the website is currently live and ready for the community to use.
ContributorsSchwarting, Jessa Lynn (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Palliative care is a field that serves to benefit enormously from the introduction of mobile medical applications. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic intend to address a reoccurring dilemma, in which palliative care patients visit the emergency room during situations that are not urgent or life-threatening. Doing so unnecessarily drains the hospital’s resources, and it prevents the patient’s physician from applying specialized care that would better suit the patient’s individual needs. This scenario is detrimental to all involved. A mobile medical application seeks to foster doctor-patient communication while simultaneously decreasing the frequency of these excessive E.R. visits. In order to provide a sufficient standard of usefulness and convenience, the design of such a mobile application must be tailored to accommodate the needs of palliative care patients. Palliative care is focused on establishing long-term comfort for people who are often terminally-ill, elderly, handicapped, or otherwise severely disadvantaged. Therefore, a UI intended for palliative care patients must be devoted to simplicity and ease of use. The application must also be robust enough that the user feels that they have been provided with enough capabilities. The majority of this paper is dedicated to overhauling an existing palliative care application, the product of a previous honors thesis project, and implementing a user interface that establishes a simple, positive, and advantageous environment. This is accomplished through techniques such as color-coding, optimizing page layout, increasing customization capabilities, and more. Above all else, this user interface is intended to make the patient’s experience satisfying and trouble-free. They should be able to log in, navigate the application’s features with a few taps of their finger, and log out — all without undergoing any frustration or difficulties.
ContributorsWilkes, Jarrett Matthew (Co-author) / Ganey, David (Co-author) / Dao, Lelan (Co-author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Faucon, Christophe (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12