Courses/Computer Science/CPSC 203/CPSC 203 Template/Labs Template/Week 3 - Lab 2

Introduction

Today you will continue with 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 2

Start - 5 Minutes	Introductory comments – Any questions from last day? Do they have the table structure they ended with last day?
12 Minutes mark	Design a query to get the data you think you need, out of the database. How will you get the results of the query to the users? (Printed? Machine-readable? Excel spreadsheet? Word document?)
17 Minutes mark	Design/sketch a data entry form to capture the Volunteer data. Draw a picture (on the board? On paper?)
25 Minutes mark	Facilitate a discussion among the groups about their designs. What do the table structures look like? (Diagrams on the board?) What do the queries look like? (specific vs. general?) What does their data entry Form look like? Discuss the pros and cons of each of the ideas brought forward. Get enthusiastic about those ideas that have good potential. Don’t be too hard on the ones that might need more thought.
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	Discuss what they liked about each other’s ideas and approaches. Get at least one student to make some notes. Make your own notes.
45 Minutes mark	Debrief and ask for feedback. Was this a good use of their time? Did they learn anything new? Reinforce anything they already knew? Was it interesting? How could it be better? Should this type of exercise be a part of the course – maybe earlier in the term?
50 Minutes mark	End of the tutorial, Thank them.

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 wells 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 6 items: problem definition, use case diagram, use case descriptions, ERD, 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