Running Head: LAB 2 – TRAIN PROTOYPE SPECIFICATION
CS 411W Lab 2
Prototype Product Specification
For
TRAIN
Prepared by: Jacob Sims-Green Team
Hill Price
Date: April 8, 2013
Version 2
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LAB 2 – TRAIN PROTOYPE SPECIFICATION
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Table of Contents
1
2
INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................4
1.1
Purpose ............................................................................................................................. 5
1.2
Scope ................................................................................................................................ 7
1.3
Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations ...................................................................... 8
1.4
References ........................................................................................................................ 9
1.5
Overview .......................................................................................................................... 9
General Description .................................................................................................................9
2.1
Prototype Architecture Description .................................................................................. 9
2.2
Prototype Functional Description................................................................................... 15
2.3
External Interfaces......................................................................................................... 17
2.3.1
Hardware Interfaces .................................................................................................17
2.3.2
Software Interfaces ..................................................................................................18
2.3.3
User Interfaces .........................................................................................................18
2.3.4
Communication Protocols and Interfaces ................................................................18
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Major Functional Component Diagram ........................................................................15
Figure 2: Prototype Functional Component Diagram ..................................................................16
List of Tables
Table 1: Real World Product v.s. Prototype ................................................................................153
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INTRODUCTION
Every position within a workforce body requires the employees that fill those
arrangements to be educated on how to successfully carry out the responsibilities associated
within those positions. Businesses and companies, both in the private and public sectors, teach
the persons filling those roles by using different methods of training. This type of educational
restraint has become a crucial determinant on whether a company will accomplish the goals
instilled within the employees during training.
In CS 410, the Green Team defined the societal problem with training by identifying key
factors that need to be reexamined and improved through the implementation of new technology.
To be more precise, the team defined the societal problem as comprised of three parts: difficulty
in delivering training materials efficiently, implementing reliable feedback mechanisms, and
creating and executing a training module in a reasonable amount of time. Such parameters, as
previously written, can be seen as evidence for the hypothesis that the current delivery of modern
training is in need of a practical solution.
The ideal version should allow users of all roles to access the product and define each
user's association with an organization. The course creator should have the capability of
retrieving the training materials from a single database and thus allow for quicker access to
resources. The product will facilitate creating training modules that can pull educational
materials to build a course. This capability should greatly decrease course creation time by
removing the need for manual construction and replacing it with automation, ultimately reducing
monetary and opportunity costs. Lastly, the ideal product should strengthen customer
involvement in course creation by generating the course from a list of customer requests.
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1.1 Purpose
The Green Team has taken these ideal factors and placed them into a prototype design
known as the Training Resource And Information Network (TRAIN). The group's design of the
system addresses the traits of the best model. TRAIN is designed to be a functional prototype
able to answer the needs for a compatible solution for the designated societal problem.
The TRAIN prototype is designed to be a training module used in order to help create an
ideal learning environment where both students and instructors can succeed. The Green Team
has a created a blueprint where the product incorporates the factors of time, reliability, feedback,
and security to generate a setting where students can benefit the most from lessons taught and
instructors can focus on their clients’ needs. The group has designed a plan to address this set of
goals, starting with the issue related to the length of time usually needed to produce instructional
modules.
The first goal of the prototype is to reduce the amount of time it takes to create a training
course. By shortening the length of time, the instructor can allocate that time to other areas that
would benefit from it the most. The second goal is to improve the return on investment (ROI) for
customers, students, and the instructors using the TRAIN software for the creation of training
units. The plan is to increase the value provided to the customers by the product in a way where
everybody is benefiting its use. The best way to analyze if customers are benefiting from the
training modules is to provide a method of feedback. This introduces the third goal: providing
reliable feedback. Criticism from the students and instructors can help improve the lessons and
the system overall. Finally, to make sure the customer data is private, the fourth and final goal is
to provide a secure environment. This goal is needed to ensure the integrity of customer data
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(personal and organization information) and to prevent the system from being comprised by
unethical and potentially harmful means.
With those goals in mind, the hope is to achieve these results in the solution. The first
result would be that TRAIN would provide a management environment where the instructor can
create, configure, and manage a set of learning modules. This environment would be built upon
the idea that the Green Team’s product would allow for the search and retrieval of needed data
that is used to build these educational foundation of the modules. The plan is to structure the
product in such a way to provide the best path for the uploading and updating of data.
The second result is a measurable decrease in time it takes to create a course from start to
finish through automation of the current process. The automation would consist of four different
parts with the first being a customer survey. This review would reduce the communication time
that it currently takes from arranging and having an in-person meeting with the instructor or by
submitting request in a paper format. Another part of the automation process is the course
generation function. This tool would replace the time consumed by the instructor to search for
topics that match their customer’s request. The third aspect of the automation process is the ease
of searching and selecting topics. With this type of capability, the prototype is expected to
strengthen the overall value of the course with more time being spent in the planning of training
that would best fit the needs of each customer. The fourth and final aspect in the automation
process is the ability to have packaging of all the course materials. This should allow quick
printing of course packs, saving time from having to print each topic one by one.
The third and final result is to increase the ease of creating training modules. This
solution represents the overall plan for the case study. Currently, one employee manages this
whole process. The goal for TRAIN is to expand this role. This capability will allow new users
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to quickly learn the capabilities and procedures of the product. This will enable each user with
knowledge of using and maintaining the system.
1.2 Scope
The most effective way to put the proposed solutions of creating training modules to use is
to design and build a prototype. To understand what the prototype’s functionalities and
capabilities are, the goals and objectives hoped to be accomplished with the TRAIN prototype
must be defined first. As detailed in a previous section, TRAIN is an educational tool that will
help instructors and students design, develop, and evaluate training modules. This type of
training production will not only allow for instructors to create courses in a more time efficient
manner, but the instructor will have more time develop . The customers, however, will have the
opportunity to select the courses being taught to them, providing a hands-on experience to their
education.
In order to accomplish this task, one of the first goals is to allow the solution to be global.
The intention is to make the prototype expand beyond the scope of course creation by instructors
through including the involvement of students and their needs. This will be accomplished by
having the prototype become web-enabled, granting access to students and instructors wherever
the training is needed.
TRAIN will be learning-objective based. Instructors will base a course on a set of defined
learning objectives. If the course has not yet been created with learning objectives that fit the
needs of the students, TRAIN will be able to arrange them in a way that allow users to find the
necessary objects by the execution of searching patterns (i.e. search bar, reference, titles).
Instructors will be able to find the necessary objectives and place them into an order that will
satisfy a subject of topic. Instructors will have the capability to edit current courses by the
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addition of other required learning objectives or removal of those no longer in use. In essence,
TRAIN will allow users the full power of customization to better suit their needs.
TRAIN will have the capability to create and add users, organizations, and roles when
needed. The expectation is that this enables the model to become more robust with the
fluctuation of clients and the roles they fill varying over time. Such capabilities are just a mere
addition to the mock-up. The prototype will be able to consolidate all current learning objectives
into one place, with the plan to enable users to avoid spending time looking for needed data.
1.3 Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations
Administrator: Training organization user that has all administrative capabilities.
Course: Training class that covers various topics.
Customer: User that can request course for employees.
Data: Information content contained in a specialized type.
Data Type: Different types of information used filter and create new course training material
(Learning Objectives, Topics, References, Courses).
Instructor: User role that will be giving training, manage courses, and their materials.
Learning Objective: One individual sub-topic point that on which a user can be trained.
National Center of Systems of Systems Engineering (NCSOSE): Organization that provide their
expertise and extensive knowledge of engineering through hands-on assistance and training
to interested customers.
Reference: Direction of where material for lectures can be found.
Student: User role that takes the training course and can provide feedback after course
completion.
System of Systems: Multiple interrelated groups of components with a common goal.
Topic: General subject areas to cover containing slides, lectures, and learning objectives.
TRAIN (Training Resource and Information Network): A web application software designed to
improve quality and precision of training material and decrease duration of course creation.
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1.4 References
National Centers for System of Systems Engineering. odu.com February 18, 2013.
http://www.odu.edu/ncsose
Sims, Jacob (2013). Lab 1 – TRAIN Descriptive Paper.
1.5 Overview
This product specification provides the hardware and software configuration, external
interfaces, capabilities and features of the TRAIN prototype. The information provided in the
remaining sections of this document includes a detailed description of the hardware, software,
and external interface architecture of the TRAIN prototype; the key features of the prototype; the
parameters that will be used to control, manage, or establish that feature; and the performance
characteristics of that feature in terms of outputs, displays, and user interaction.
2 General Description
The TRAIN prototype is comprised of several different parts. These components
comprise of the system architecture, the functional components and the external interface. Each
section is a representation of different levels of the overall system.
2.1 Prototype Architecture Description
Table 1 addresses what will be implemented in the prototype compared to the ideal real
world product. The product will be a website built with C# in ASP.Net/MVC framework. This
design will allow for the tool and associated files stored in a centralized database to be accessed
remotely. MySQL is the database structure used to store all data connected to the prototype.
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LAB 2 – TRAIN PROTOYPE SPECIFICATION
Features
User Authentication
10
Real World Project
Role logs in with
Prototype
Implemented
Username/Password
Admin: Approve
View customer request and
Request
approve
Admin: Assign
Assign instructors that will
Instructor/s to
be teaching and creating
Organization
course. These instructors
Implemented
Implemented
will be able to edit only their
courses
Admin: add users
Create users and assign role Implemented
Instructor: Add/Update Add or update topics,
data
Implemented
references, learning
objectives
Instructor: Associate
Link learning objectives to
Data
topics, topics to learning
objectives, learning objects to
references, references to
learning objects
Implemented
LAB 2 – TRAIN PROTOYPE SPECIFICATION
Features
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Real World Project
Prototype
Instructor: Feedback
Notify instructors/admin
Not Implemented
Notification
when course is rated low
Instructor: Edit
Add or remove topics from
Generated Course
generated course
Instructor: Create
Create course from scratch
Implemented
Easily search for required
Implemented
Implemented
Customized Course
Instructor: Search
material when
creating/editing course
Instructor: Add
Add customized feedback to Not Implemented, all topics will have a
Customized Feedback
learning objective, topic, and number rating. All students will be able to
course
Instructor: Compile and Quickly compile all data
only rate topics.
Implemented
Print Course
making up course and print
Manager: Request
Request course by selecting Implemented
Course
desired learning objective
Manager: View
After selecting learning
Requested Course
objectives, display course
Hours
duration
Implemented
LAB 2 – TRAIN PROTOYPE SPECIFICATION
Features
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Real World Project
Prototype
Manager: Assign
Assign students to approved Implemented
Students
course
Manager: Add Students Give students username
Implemented
Manager: Update
Update organization name
Not Implemented, Admin can change
Organization
and email
information
Information
Manager: View Student See all students ratings for
Implemented
Rating
particular course
Student: View Course
Admin upload course
Materials
material for student view
Student: Course
Student gives text based
Partially Implemented, a single text box for
Feedback
feedback on course as a
course feedback
Not Implemented
whole
Student: Topic
Rating based feedback per
Feedback
topic
Student: Learning
Take a quiz at the end of
Objective Quiz
each topic based off of
learning objective
Not Implemented,
Not Implemented, only course feedback
LAB 2 – TRAIN PROTOYPE SPECIFICATION
Features
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Real World Project
Prototype
Student: Course History View previous courses taken Partially Implemented
and feedback given
Prerequisites
Topics will have
Not Implemented, admin will have to
prerequisites that will affect review generated course and add extra
course generation
topics accordingly
Student: Course
Student gives text based
Partially Implemented, a single text box for
Feedback
feedback on course as a
course feedback
whole
Student: Topic
Rating based feedback per
Feedback
topic
Student: Learning
Take a quiz at the end of
Objective Quiz
each topic based off of
Not Implemented,
Not Implemented, only course feedback
learning objective
Student: Course History View previous courses taken Partially Implemented
and feedback given
Table 1: Real World Product vs. Prototype
The prototype database will be populated with both real and fake records. Users
information, such as names, credentials, and associated organizations will be fictitious data used
to showcase the capabilities of the prototype. The learning objectives, topics, and courses will be
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factual records used to display the competence of the algorithms implemented within the product
in such areas as request, search, and creation of courses.
Every user will need a personal computer to use TRAIN. This will provide the
functionality of interaction between prototype and the end-user. To use the product remotely, the
user will need to have access to the internet. This network provides the communication needed
between the GUI and repository.
The GUI will be implemented to visually look like the real world product but will have
some functionality left out in the prototype, as defined per Table 1 previously mentioned. It will
have interfaces designed four separate views that will be associated with the roles given. The real
and fake data provided in the training module will be used to simulate the interaction between
TRAIN GUI and associated database containing the record, as shown in Figure 1.
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LAB 2 – TRAIN PROTOYPE SPECIFICATION
Figure 1: Major Functional Component Diagram
2.2 Prototype Functional Description
The web-based application is comprised of four separate user interfaces that are
associated with different types of users. Each client will have different capabilities when using
the training module. Figure 2 provides the illustration of interaction between each role and the
TRAIN server.
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Figure 2: Prototype Functional Component Diagram
The Administrator is granted all the capabilities provided to the other roles. There are
certain abilities that the Administrator has that are not granted to the other three user roles. The
first of these is the ability to review and approve course requests generated by the customers.
When they have approved a course, they will then be able to assign instructors to that course.
The Administrator will also have access to the functionality that manages users and
organizations for the entire application.
The next interface is the Instructor. They will be able to able to manage courses and
materials associated with them. They will also be able to review feedback on courses they have
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been assigned by the Administrator. When needed, an instructor will have the ability to upload
and edit data within their interface. The Instructor will also have access to everything that is
accessible to the Customer, the next lower interface on the role tier.
The Customer interface has the capability to request a training course and will be able to
assign students to that course once it is approved. Feedback will also be another vital function
within this interface that will allow the Customer to express their concerns with the way the
course was taught. The Student interface, along with the Customer, will have access to the
feedback section after the course has been taken.
2.3 External Interfaces
The external interface used for the TRAIN prototype will be the website the product is
built upon. This will be the main tool used to run the prototype and is capable of running through
any current desktop web browser. With TRAIN being built as a website allows for remote access
to the product.
2.3.1 Hardware Interfaces
The TRAIN prototype will not have any hardware aspects to demonstrate its capabilities.
It will be developed on a virtual machine running Windows 7 on the Old Dominion University
Computer Science department servers. This will enable users with the correct CS account
credentials to access from any computer on or off campus.
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2.3.2 Software Interfaces
The website will be built in the ASP.Net/MVC 4.5 framework. This framework allows
for the backend to be developed using C# as the main programming language for functionality
and CSHTML for the frontend development. The database and its queries will be constructed
using MySQL.
2.3.3 User Interfaces
User interfaces will be displayed via the website interface. This will have the capability
to access the product through any current desktop web browser. Having this capability, it allows
for end-users to have an entry to the prototype from any computer outside of the ODU CS
network.
2.3.4 Communication Protocols and Interfaces
Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP) will be the main tool used to communicate with
the solution located on the ODU Computer Science network. This will deliver all the interfaces
associated with the end-user based upon their roles stored within the database. The
communication between the database and TRAIN will allow for the existing course modules or
creation of new courses based upon Customer queries for learning objectives.