Running head: Lab 1 – REMSY Product Description
Lab 1 – REMSY Product Description
Team Blue
Eric Diep
CS411W
Janet Brunelle & Hill Price
April 25, 2014
Version 4
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LAB 1 – REMSY Product Description
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Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 3
2. PRODUCT DESCRIPTION ................................................................................................. 4
2.1 Key Product Features and Capabilities ........................................................................... 4
2.2 Major Components (Hardware/Software) ....................................................................... 6
3. IDENTIFICATION OF CASE STUDY ............................................................................... 7
4. REMSY PRODUCT PROTYPE DESCRIPTION ............................................................... 8
4.1 Prototype Architecture (Hardware/Software) ................................................................. 8
4.2 Prototype Features and Capabilities ................................................................................ 9
4.3 Prototype Development Challenges .............................................................................. 10
GLOSSARY ........................................................................................................................... 12
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 14
List of Figures
Figure 1. Major Functional Component Diagram .................................................................... 6
Figure 2. Prototype Major Functional Component Diagram.................................................... 9
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1. INTRODUCTION
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, resource management is a critical
area of how day-to-day business operation is handled in an organization (Federal Emergency
Management Agency, 2014). Having adequate resource management tasks such as lending and
tracking equipment, tracking inventory, and organizing personal deployment can be done with
ease. Without a resource management system, an organization’s operation will be constrained
thus affecting the success of the organization. A flexible and scalable system is needed to
accomplish necessary resource management tasks. Additionally, collecting data about an
organization’s program is vital to analyzing the growth of an organization.
In the case of a program expanding beyond its current boundary, a system for resource
management will be necessary to control possible problems, such as overlapping of provided
resources or miscommunication of necessary collected data. To control overlapping information,
a system will need to merge data from different locations to mitigate such problems. The system
should allow clients to schedule the use of resources without prior knowledge from any
locations. This will streamline the process for clients, and organizational programs can share
collected data. In any case, the system should not cause clients unnecessary burden, and clients
should be able to access the system from any devices. REsource Management SYstem (REMSY)
is a wide-area resource management service conceived by the Old Dominion University (ODU)
CS411 Team Blue. It is designed with the aforementioned qualities in mind in order to address
the problems that the tutoring program at ODU is currently facing.
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2. PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
REMSY is a system that has the capability to manage an institution’s tutoring resources that
are vital to the program’s operation. Scheduling for tutoring appointments is coordinated in a
fashion that will allow for a greater use of the available resources. REMSY will be a source for
centralizing data collection from all users. The growth of a tutoring program will be attained by
the usage of reports generated by REMSY containing necessary levels of details.
All users will be required to have an account. Accounts will be differentiated depending on
the user’s role. REMSY cultivates an environment where students and tutors are connected by
taking advantage of the different options for accessing the system, through a web portal or a
mobile application. Making use of the different options for accessing the system, communication
will be increased. In addition, tutors will have the ability to be mobile and freelance tutoring
made available.
2.1 Key Product Features and Capabilities
REMSY will be accessible via a web portal or a mobile application to allow for an active
environment where tutors and students area able to be in constant communication. All users will
be required to have an account; the account will be setup according to the user’s role. The
accounts will contain necessary information about the user, such as their schedule, and contact
information. With the information, the process for scheduling a tutoring appointment will be
streamlined. With REMSY, when a particular subject is not available, information regarding the
turn-away will be appended to the generated report. When the requested subject is made
available for tutoring, students will have the chance to apply to become a tutor for the subject. If
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a student wants to independently tutor certain subjects, REMSY will allow for students to
become freelance tutors.
When a tutoring appointment is scheduled, notifications about the appointment will be
sent via email, Short Messaging Service (SMS), or application based alerts. Since tracking the
usage of a program, such as time spent during tutoring visits, is vital to an organization, a sign-in
and sign-out module will be implemented. When a tutoring appointment exceeds its time limit,
either the student or the tutor will be notified. In the case of an organization with branches
located throughout an institution, REMSY supports the usage from the different locations within
the same instance of the application. Since each branch will have different operational
requirements, REMSY will be customizable based on the program’s template.
To insure that all personal information of the user is kept confidential, a secure
connection will be established for transferring data. Alongside of implementing a secure
connection for reliable data transfer, a verification method will be implemented dependent on the
tutor, the student, or both. To allow for the system to be accessible by all types of users, REMSY
will be in compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section 508 states that
all information technology developed are accessible to people with or without disabilities
(Rouse, 2010). REMSY will also be in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act (FERPA). According to the U.S. Department of Education, FERPA allows for
students and parents to inspect and review the students’ education records (U.S. Department of
Education).
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2.2 Major Components (Hardware/Software)
Figure 1 illustrates the major functional components of REMSY. Since REMSY is
available across platforms, mobile devices and desktops are included as a functional component
to REMSY. REMSY will make use of a web server, which will host Apache, and a database
server, which will host MySQL, to respectively host the application and store necessary
information regarding the clients. The web server will host the developed web application and
the database server will host all information regarding the tutoring resources. To generate
reports, a reporting engine will be developed to run against the REMSY database server.
Figure 1. Major Functional Component Diagram
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REMSY will be designed to integrate with services provided by the university such as
TutorTrac, Banner, Shibboleth, and email services. REMSY will make use of a university’s email server to send notifications of tutoring sessions and notes between the tutor and student. To
successfully authenticate users, integration with Shibboleth will be required. Integration with
Banner will be required to access a personal education report of an individual. This will ensure
that correct tutoring is made available to the student. Since REMSY will be made available for
access on desktops and mobile devices, REMSY will be developed in parallel to ensure that all
functionality and aesthetics are the same.
3. IDENTIFICATION OF CASE STUDY
Marissa Jimenez and Jeffrey Turner serve as the mentors for REMSY. Ms. Jimenez is an
Instruction Resource Specialist at ODU’s Student Success Center. Mr. Turner is a Higher
Education Resource Assistant at ODU. Both Ms. Jimenez and Mr. Turner are seeking a solution
to better manage the use of tutoring in the various tutoring locations within separate departments.
REMSY’s case study is the tutoring centers at ODU. Currently ODU has six-plus locations
on campus offering tutoring services. Along with the Peer Educator Program (PEP), which offers
tutoring for about 40 courses, each of the locations is managed independently respectively by the
department that is in charge of the tutoring service. Currently the PEP is using TutorTrac to
manage tutoring services (personal communication, October 9, 2013).
The PEP is currently the only tutoring service center with TutorTrac implemented. The PEP
has found that TutorTrac does not satisfy necessary requirements. TutorTrac does not have the
capability of handling a multitude of departments, let alone the varying departmental
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requirements (personal communication, October 9, 2013). With a rise in tutoring service usage,
tutoring has outgrown its respective facilities. This has caused static kiosks, with TutorTrac
installed, to track tutoring usage to be infeasible. In addition, TutorTrac is, in the words of Ms.
Jimenez, “clunky” (personal communication, October 9, 2013). TutorTrac is “clunky” in the
sense that it does not allow for flexibility and burdens a student seeking tutoring. When a student
is able to navigate TutorTrac, there is no engine in place to track turn-aways. To accommodate
for the negligence of the engine, tracking turn-away is done by hand.
4. REMSY PRODUCT PROTYPE DESCRIPTION
The REMSY prototype will provide a configuration of the REMSY environment with the
following accounts: tutor account, student account, and administrator account. Along with
providing a configuration of the REMSY environment, the REMSY prototype will also include
an optimized database, web and mobile application, and a test system to aid in administering the
database. The REMSY prototype will demonstrate that both the web and mobile application are
compliant with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Section 508.
Furthermore, the REMSY prototype will use a testing harness to demonstrate its capabilities by
testing possible scenarios encountered before, during, and after a tutoring session.
4.1 Prototype Architecture (Hardware/Software)
Figure 2 illustrates the prototype that will be developed for REMSY. The hardware and
software used in the prototype will be the same as those in Figure 1, with the addition of the test
harness, Computer Science mail server, and simulated data. A test harness will be implemented
to simulate the use of the system. To accommodate for the limited accessibility of university
assets set the accordance of ODU regulations, alternatives are in place to best model the
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components show in Figure 1. The Computer Science mail server will take the place of the
university’s mail server. To access student data held in the university’s Banner system, a mockup
of the Banner system will be simulated. In the case of authentication Shibboleth will be
simulated by using an Active Directory domain.
Figure 2. Prototype Major Functional Component Diagram
4.2 Prototype Features and Capabilities
The prototype for REMSY will have some similarity to the RWP, but REMSY has two
categories of features, the basic user features and the advance features. Within the basic user
features, capabilities have been categorized respectively between web access and mobile
application access. Both web access and mobile application access will demonstrate basic user
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features such as logging-in and out, scheduling and managing tutoring appointments, and
providing feedback for attended appointments. The mobile access application will demonstrate
the ability to check-in to a scheduled appointment via a mobile device, and to receive push
notifications for alerts regarding a scheduled appointment. The prototype will also demonstrate
the capability to send customized alerts via e-mail or SMS.
For advance features, accounts granted with administrative rights will have the ability to
make necessary edits to the database when needed. To streamline the process of log-in, an option
of using a card reader will be demonstrated to capture necessary log-in information. A secured
connection will be used to ensure the protection of confidential personal information while being
transferred. The prototype will have the capability to gather data regarding students who could
not find tutoring for a course. Also, the prototype will have the functionality to track basic
tutoring appointment information, such as time-in, time-out, and progress.
The prototype features will demonstrate how resources used by the branches of tutoring
centers can be managed to ensure that resources are used to their full potential. Having a web
portal and mobile application will demonstrate the cultivating of an environment where tutors
and students can be constant communication. Having the two mediums of access to the
application will grant the ability for tutoring to be mobile, as tutoring centers expand outside of
their current boundaries. The tracking functionality will enable tutoring centers to track
necessary information electronically rather than keeping paper records.
4.3 Prototype Development Challenges
A number of risks have been identified that REMSY can possibly face. The risks are
categorized as customer risks or technical risks. For technical risks, REMSY will be handling an
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abundance of information and a common risk is data integrity. Data integrity will be a main
concern since multiple branches will be accessing the same set of data. Data integrity will be
maintained by implementing a timestamp of when information was edited and who made the
edit. Another technical risk is the data being handled are confidential meaning that data security
is a concern. Data security will be put in place by allowing users who are authorized to access
the database. Due to the fact that Shibboleth and Banner cannot be accessed for the project,
simulations of Shibboleth and Banner will be needed. Simulated Shibboleth and Banner will aid
in having the test harness simulate real data and authentication.
The user interface (UI) will be the next area of concern for REMSY. The UI is interface
between the user and the application. REMSY’s interface must encapsulate the aspect of ease of
use to not create unnecessary stress for the user. (Since REMSY will be implemented as a web
application and mobile application, there is a challenge to keep both applications’ interface
similar, both UI will need to be similar to allow for a smooth transition between both
applications.) To mitigate both of these problems, development of the web application and
mobile application will be done at the same time. Both the interface, and hardware and software
upgrades to the application are areas of concern. To mitigate this, both applications will be
extensively tested cross-browser. This goes for mitigating usability and version control across
popular browsers.
Some customer risks that were noted are lack of university-wide adoption and transition to a
new process flow. To mitigate lack of university-wide adoption, REMSY will be customizable to
program requirements and reduce requirements on infrastructure. To mitigate transition to a new
process flow, the process flow will be intuitive, and training and a user manual will be provided.
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GLOSSARY
508 Compliance: Amendment of the Rehabilitation Act which requires Federal agencies to
make electronic and information technology accessible to people with and without
disabilities.
Active Directory: A directory service implemented by Microsoft for authenticating and
authorizing all users and computers in a Windows domain network.
Administrator: The manager of a software tier. As a User, has all rights and privileges
concerning a program and how it operates.
Apache: Open source web server providing a full range of web server features distributed by the
Apache Software Foundation.
Banner: Centralized academic and administrative records system.
Blue team: The creators of REMSY. Zachary Regelski, Seth Hohensee, Denis Mileyko, Eric
Diep, Corey Campbell, and Matthew Letchworth
FERPA: Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
HID: A human interface device or HID is a type of computer device that interacts with, and most
often takes input from, humans and may deliver output to humans. The term “HID” most
commonly refers to the USB-HID specification.
MySQL: Open Source SQL database management system by Oracle Corporation.
ODU: Old Dominion University.
PHP: General-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development.
REMSY: Resource Management System to aid in scheduling and collecting information on
tutoring at Old Dominion University developed by the Spring 2014 CS411 Team Blue.
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Shibboleth: Single sign-on process that authenticates and authorizes a user, and allows a user to
access secure sites by using university computing account username and password.
SMS: Short Message Service. Another name for Text Messages.
Student: A student who is not currently a Tutor. As a type of user, Students are seeking to either
find tutoring, or apply to be a tutor.
Tutor: A student who has applied to the institution and was granted tutor status. They teach
students for classes they need help in. As a type of user, can sign up to teach classes and
manage appointments.
TutorTrac: Completely web-based management software for learning, writing, reading, tutoring
departments, and academic skills centers developed by Redrock Software.
UI: User Interface.
UIN: University Identification Number.
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REFERENCES
Federal Emergency Management Agency. 2014, February 11. Resource Management. Retrieved
from http://www.fema.gov/resource-management
Jimenez, M. (2013, October 9). Personal Interview.
NITAAC. (n.d.). What is Section 508 Compliance?. Retrieved from
https://nitaac.nih.gov/nitaac/node/2281
U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html