Courses/Computer Science/CPSC 203/CPSC 203 Template/Labs Template/Week 3 - Lab 1
Contents
Introduction
Today you will start your Lab Quiz 4 in your assigned groups from the Term Project. You may refer to the lab modules to help aid your group for this Lab Quiz.
Have you participated with an organization that organized events and relied on volunteers? Students will be acting as consultants to the organizers of such event and will create conceptual models of how to organize and structure such an event from an Information Technology perspective.
Schedule
Tutorial 1
| Start - 5 Minutes | Introductory comments – check that they have read the materials and understand the process and the reason for it; highlight that this is a bit experimental this year and feedback is really helpful; make sure everyone has a team of at least three or four to collaborate with. Do the definitions of “system” and “Information System” make sense? |
| 12 Minutes mark | Show the “Go to the Start” video |
| 17 Minutes mark | Ask about general thoughts. Do they understand the role of volunteers? Now pretend that the organizers have asked for your help to design an Access application to help them manage their volunteers. Do they have an Organization Chart? Do they understand the relative roles of the Vice-Chairs and the Coordinators? Do they have a copy of the Volunteer Application Form? |
| 25 Minutes mark | Get in your groups and start on the Design of the data structure.
Hint: start with the data you want to get “out”, find out how it will be collected (the Volunteer Form) and then begin to figure out how to record it. What you are working toward is a table structure with (possibly) multiple tables, each with a defined primary key, and appropriate attribute fields, and foreign keys linking pairs of tables. |
| While teams are working | Walk about the room, offer comments, answer questions, review any diagrams or notes they are making, offer both approval and suggestions as you feel appropriate. (Encouragement is important.) |
| 35 Minutes mark | Ask for any preliminary results or structures. Basically, try to get the teams talking across themselves to share basic information and ideas. |
| 45 Minutes mark | Remind them that the tutorial will be over in a few minutes and that they should make sure they have made good notes so they can start again on the next day. Encourage them to try to come to the next tutorial with a completed table structure. |
| 50 Minutes mark | End of the tutorial |
Go to the start – An Organizational Case Study
Introduction
To this point, CPSC203 tutorials have focused on IT-oriented skills and knowledge: such as how to construct a spreadsheet or a database, and how to organize and analyze data within those technologies. In the final pair of tutorials this week, we take a more “Organizational Perspective” – how to leverage your skills, tools and technologies to benefit a specific organization. We want to look at using our skills to design a system.
Definition
System - a group of elements that work together to accomplish some goal or objective. For example in a computer system, the elements could be logic circuits and the goal could be a computation.
Information System – A system that is focused on information. Information is essentially data that has some meaning or context. In an information system, the elements are now: People (users), Technology (hardware, software, telecommunications), Data (raw material for information), and Procedures (rules and algorithms). A functional information system coordinates these elements for a specific organizational purpose. For example, an Accounting Information System, or a Personnel Management Information System.
Our exercise focuses on the thought-processes useful in designing an information system. This requires you to bring together and use the skills and knowledge that you have studied and practiced in CPSC 203, but in an applied context to help an organization.
We will focus on organizing an Athletic event using volunteers. “Go to the starT” is a short (11 minutes) video that illustrates such an event, specifically a World Championship Speed Skating Event held at U of C’s Olympic Oval. After viewing the video, your task is to sketch out a system to help the event organizers manage their volunteer resources.
Your Mission
Your Group Project team will act as “consultants” to:
- Write a short definition of the problem you are solving. ( about 5 lines).
- Design a use-case diagram that describes how the resulting system will be used by a client (e.g., the Vice-Chair Event Support).
- For each use case in step 2, write its use case description.
- Design an appropriate data structure (sketch of ER diagrams, Tables, and Fields) based on the attached volunteer application form.
- Sketch the interface design and the query for the “Vice-Chair Event Support”, that allows her to convey the needed volunteer information for each of the coordinators reporting to that vice-chair (Transportation, Food Services, etc. - see the attached Organization Chart). In the query design, you will need to define: the specific tables and fields needed for the query as well as appropriate grouping and summarization and any specific selection criteria for which the query returns results.
- Sketch the Window Navigation Diagram (WND) for the designed user interface.
During both tutorial sessions this week, you will work out these designs within your team. By the end of the second tutorial, you will need to submit 7 items: problem definition, use case diagram, use case descriptions, ERD, interface design, window interface design, and query design. The submission can be as hard copies, or a mix of hard and soft copies (based on your arrangement with your TA).
NOTE: While there is no “single correct answer, you should be able to explain the rationale by which your solution is “a good answer”.
Documents
Please read all the documents and take some notes possibly from the video that will be shown.
Org Chart : 
Volunteer Registration Forms: Media:Volunteer Registration FormB.doc
Marking Schema
- Problem definition: 5 marks
- Use case diagram: 10 marks
- Use case descriptions: 15 marks
- Entity relationship diagram: 20 marks
- Interface design: 20 marks
- Window navigation diagram: 10 marks
- Query: 20 marks
