This is a paper for Dr. Rowan’s Spring 2009 ITEC 4900 Information Technology
Internship class. The paper is divided into several sections that include an Introduction,
Internship Times and Meeting, Challenges and Surprises, Results, Conclusion, and Future
Work.
Introduction
At the beginning of the semester, the primary goal was to obtain an internship from the list of available ones. My primary interest was to work with any of the software development or testing projects, which turned out to be very good since the available positions were closely related to this. The two positions that interested me were the Ed
Tech intern under Dr. Nagel and Dr. Jams position which dealt with running and testing programs from his new Java book. The Ed Tech position was particularly interesting since it dealt with Content Management Software (CMS), which I’ve always been curious about.
My first interview was for the Ed tech position with developer Andrew
Champion, who is one of two application developers here at GGC. The interview went very well, Mr. Andrew was interested in what kind of experience I had with different software and which ones I was working with currently. Within two days of the interview
I got an e-mail from Dr. Nagel offering me the position; the next steps were to inform Dr.
Rowan and setup the first meeting with Mr. Andrew.
Internship Position and Meetings
During the first meeting we went through the basics of the portal structure at
GGC, and also discussed the current project that the team was preparing to launch. We also fixed a weekly appointment schedule that worked out for the both of us. The meetings would take place every Thursday at 3:30pm in room A1970, where the developers’ offices are located. The meetings would last anywhere between 30 minutes to
2 or more hours depending on the specific task to be accomplished that week. As we came to find out the longer meetings would usually include a good deal of time configuring the software on my personal machine, since the particular framework was more suited to run on Macintosh computers.
We concluded that 6 hours of weekly work outside of meetings would be ideal.
Any other concerns, questions that I had would be coordinated through e-mail. This communication became vital during the semester as it allowed to maintain our weekly meetings even when other issues came up. This communication also allowed for better

completion of tasks as we were able to resolve minor issues that otherwise hindered the finishing of a task.
C hallenges and Surprises
I was very lucky to have joined the Ed Tech team at the beginning of spring, since they were about to start on a new project of implementing a portal management structure.
There were a fair number of challenges and surprises along the way.
Challenges
To start with challenges, my initial one was to brush up on the basics of software development, and get up to speed with the exact tasks that the team was working on. I needed to absorb some key concepts of web development such as:
*What are Portal Management Systems?
*How do Portlets work?
*What are Web Application Frameworks?
*Which criterions are looked at when selecting a web framework?
I did my research into the Liferay Portal Management Software, Rails framework and portlets, and was able to obtain a basic understanding of how they work. The first phase of the project was to develop a new app for Intramurals through the Rails framework.
My next challenge was to get familiar with creating use cases and requirements documents for the new portal. We conducted interviews with existing portal users and gathered the necessary data to formulate use case scenarios and requirements documents.
This process wasn’t too unfamiliar for me as I had learned about developing use-cases in previous IT courses.
Another challenge that I was faced with concerned with configuring the Aptana software to run properly on my machine. This was a significant obstacle as there were several bugs that needed to be resolved in order to run rails on Aptana. Mr. Andrew’s vast knowledge of web development software, Windows Platform and Linux Distro’s enabled us to solve most of the bugs and keep Aptana running.
The final challenge during the internship was learning to work with Rails and
Ruby. Ruby is a pure object-oriented language that requires some time to be absorbed. I came to the conclusion that the mechanics behind how Rails work was perhaps more important than knowing the Ruby language in creating Rails Apps.
Surprises
To start with surprises, an early one was how much of theory learned was actually applied in the real work world. The concepts such as using use-cases and database schema were directly applied in creating software. This was very surprising as I was expecting a much different approach to developing software when starting from the design stage.
Another one of the surprises I encountered was at the pace the project was being done. The time taken from the design process to actual development was very little, and a significant amount of time is spent on configuration compare to actual coding done.

A final surprise for me was the amount of resources used to develop an application of this scale. This was far less than what I had expected, and almost all of the software used in the project was free and open source. It’s amazing how little resources are needed to produce high quality applications.
Results
The new intramurals application project was at the stage of its Alpha Launch at the end of the semester. The new app looks to be much more productive and easier to use than the existing one. Considering it was built from careful analysis of the existing app and the recommendations we got from existing users, it is sure to exceed expectations.
One of the positive results from all of the development that took place was the compatibility of the new app to existing and other portal management systems. Using open source allows for choosing different kinds of software that are compatible with each other. This is crucial since ad on apps such as Facebook and Iphone apps need to be able to communicate with the main portal structure for them to be functional. Issues such as multiple logins and seamless information sharing should be addressed once the final portal structure is in place. Overall the results the project produced were excellent and further results also look promising.
Conclusion
The internship experience was a very unique and educational one, and I was very fortunate to get this opportunity to join the Ed Tech team. I was able to gather some vital exposure to real world software development procedures and understand the scope of certain projects and resources needed to complete them. If I had to summarize some of the key knowledge that I was able to come away with from this experience I would list them as:
*The essential steps in starting a software application project
*Relating theoretical skills to real world skills
*Gaining an insight on what to scope out or focus on in future courses and projects.
*Obtaining information on what web/application development jobs require from an individual.
*Observing professional behavior and methods applied in the workplace.
*Studying the proper ways of communication and language used in an IT environment.
I believe that the points listed here will prove to be very valuable to me in my career in IT as a software developer. I would again like to stress the point that this experience was as close as it gets to being in a professional job environment, and therefore also enhances ones college credentials and prepares one for a career ahead.
Future Work
After my internship experience I expressed my interest in working with Ed Tech team in the near future. The team also interested in having me around, providing research and assistance in their upcoming projects. Due to my unavailability during the 1 st
half of

summer, I will be missing out on the some key aspects of the final implementation of the new Intramurals App and other portal software, but I hope to be working with them during the second half. I am excited for the opportunity and positive that the experience will prove to be vital in my future career.