Europa Webpage Suite

Index:

Abstract
Calendar
Project Development
Findings and Contributions
Links and References
Return to Europa

Abstract:

Europa is a forum for students engaged in computer science research at The Ohio State University. Europa is funded by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) through support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the GE Fund. Europa research focuses on component-based software and other related topics pursued by the Reusable Software Research Group at The Ohio State University.

This suite of webpages has been developed in order to provide focus and continuity for Europa research. The intent is two-fold. First, publicizing Europa may encourage other students to get involved in research early on in their undergraduate careers. Second, each member of Europa will gain experience and professional growth from documenting their research processes and products.

Oh, and alas there is that ever-present motive of securing future funding on the basis of documented past performance. For current members, just think of this as your legacy for future generations of Europans :-) [Scott]

Calendar:

• 01/05/1999: Committed to project at first Europa meeting for Winter Quarter 1999. [Scott]
• 01/15/1999: Design review with Paolo Bucci. [Scott]
• 01/25/1999: Design walk-through with Bruce Weide. [Scott]
• 02/02/1999: Released webpages for Europa-member "beta-testing". [Scott]
• 12/02: Revised current layout of people and projects pages. People pages were separated into active and inactive members. Project listings were combined into one page, with separations for active, inactive, and completed projects. [Lisa]
• 3/03: Europa file structure was reorganized after two meetings of the Europa group to discuss student needs and preferences. New user documentation was created, both web-based and Unix README files. New links were added to the Europa web page to help guide new student members and explain the new file structure to everyone.[Lisa]

Project Development:

The original intent of this project was to have a webpage with links to each of the current members of Europa. Each member was to maintain their own webpage documenting their research and projects. There had been issues during previous quarters about progress and follow-through on various projects, so an added hope was that by documenting their work, students would set goals and commit to their fruition.

During development, I wanted to avoid designing a constellation of webpages that would be difficult to maintain. For this reason, the main page was kept simple. Project webpages will be kept separate from individual student pages. This will help manage group projects and projects that outlive some of the students working on them.

There are still a lot of cosmetic changes I want to make, but I'm going to wait until I get some feedback from Europa members. The only planned structural change is to scale back from dividing the projects into so many different categories. Most projects will fall under several categories, so the division is somewhat artificial. The original intent of the categories was to help students identify future projects in their area of interest, but that concern may be somewhat content-free, and compromises the consistency and simplicity of the website. [Scott]

After discussions with Paolo in December 02, a decision was made to consolidate the projects into one central page, with separations between Active, Inactive, and Completed projects. Since students often do not note their graduation or other reasons for a project becoming inactive, we decided to designate a project as inactive if the project page had not been updated in 2002, or if we knew the student had graduated and did not have plans to continue the project.

We also decided to split the people listings into Active and Inactive members, using similar criteria.

Discussions continue on more long-term plans for the site and associated files. [Lisa]

3/03: A primary change in the file structure is the addition of two directories: temporary_student_files and archive. Due to the large volume of data left behind by students after they graduate or leave the group, it was decided that if students request space within the Europa files to store project work, they may create a directory within temporary_student_files that will be deleted after they leave Europa.

The Archive is managed by the Europa faculty and will house work that students submit that is well documented and either ready to be used or ready for future Europans to pick up and continue developing.

Maintenance of the files and the web site will be decreased by these changes, though there are still maintenance activities to be completed. A Webmaster page was developed to direct members and others to the correct person, as this will change depending on who is involved with this project.[Lisa]

Findings and Contributions:

This will be an ongoing project requiring regular maintainence. The value of its contributions will only be determined retrospectively as Europa members give their project pages content, and other students become interested in research because of them. [Scott]

Links and References:

• Europa people.
• Europa projects.
• Europa Welcome Documents

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