Professor Karen Reid and I just went through this design plan, and it is now posted on the MarkUs project blog.  Please check it out here.

Leigh Honeywell will be speaking at the event.  She’s had a ton of experience in IT security and is an amazing (and inspiring) speaker — I’ve attended her presentations a few times, and she’s got lots of experience and knowledge to share (as well as interesting stories).  Leigh is the co-founder and director of HackLab.TO, attended the University of Toronto, and is a mentor for the Google Summer of Code program.  So she’s definitely somebody you’d want to meet!

As for me, I’m definitely going to go if work and school permits.

And yes, this is a ladies night out — sorry gents!

I know it’s only 5 days into 2010, but I’ve got good news already!  This term, I’ll be working on MarkUs, an open source online grading tool, under the supervision of Professor Karen Reid.  Huge thanks also goes to Professor Greg Wilson for giving me this opportunity to be part of the 49X project team this term!

What is MarkUs?

Here’s a brief overview of what the project is about:

MarkUs (pronounced “mark us”) is an open-source tool which recreates the ease and flexibility of grading assignments with pen on paper, within a web application. It also allows students and instructors to form groups, and collaborate on assignments. It’s predecessor OLM (Online Marking) was originally written in Python on top of the TurboGears framework.

The MarkUs project is a re-implementation of the Online Marking system using Ruby on Rails. The goal of this project is to take what we learned from OLM and our forays into Web-CAT, and build a web-based marking tool that includes an early submission and testing system in support of test driven development.

For more information, please check out the project site here.

What will I be doing?

I’ll be primarily working on the usability and user interface design of MarkUs.  In terms of which components and/or areas of focus…etc., these still need to be determined.  More details still to come!

Meeting the team

We’ll be having a 3-day code sprint on campus from January 15th to January 17th.  It’s going to be our chance to meet everybody else that will be working on the project, and I’m sure it’s going to be lots of fun!  I’m really looking forward to meeting everybody on the team!  :)

That’s all for now — Hope everybody had a warm and fun-filled winter holiday!  Happy New Year! :)

It was also a great chance to meet this year’s Department of Computer Science (DCS) Ambassadors! I look forward to working with you guys!

That is all for now. :) — I just wanted to give a brief update on what I’ve been up to :D

Week 1:  Orientation

We started work on a Thursday, and half of that day was orientation.  A little more than a hundred students sat in the Amphitheatre listening to a series of presentations one followed by another.  After that, we were split into 3 groups and each group alternated in getting a tour of the building, getting a tour of our gym, and getting our photos taken for our badges.  The rest of the Thursday afternoon and Friday, I mainly spent reading DB2 material, meeting the people I’ll be working with, and familiarizing myself with the building.

Week 2:  Getting Started

By the end of the first week, I already started configuring my desktop at work.  The rest of this second week also consisted of some installations here and there.  I still spent most of my time reading about DB2 though.  The most exciting thing about the second week was the fact that I finally got exposed to something UX related.  I got to sit into a secondary evaluation of a product that last year’s PEY student has already done a primary analysis for.  I was really happy to be able to draw back on a lot of things that we learned in our HCI course at school.  I didn’t feel as lost as I thought I would be because I already have most of the background knowledge needed to understand these analyses.

During Week 2, I also found out which project I will be taking part in.  This project has had no usability team participation in the past, so we will be starting right from the beginning, where we generate preliminary results through walkthroughs…etc.  Another team member and I will be the main ones working on this, but we will also be coordinating with the development team as well as other people that are involved in the product.  Seems like a good start already!

Week 3:  Now what do I do?

After getting assigned to be part of a project, I was told to complete a usability walkthrough already.  Having not done it before, I was very lost (and I still am).  But I was told to just use my judgment, and ask lots of questions.  Having learnt all these usability assessments and procedures at school, I wasn’t sure which ones I were to apply.  But after speaking with others, I finally decided to take bits and pieces of what I learned, and make variations to it as appropriate.  I think the most important things to keep in mind are probably the purpose and goal behind these analyses, and to focus on usability and not to get sidetracked.

Week 4:  Machine!!

Today’s Wednesday, so it’s not exactly the end of this week yet.  But I already know what the highlight of this week will be.  Since the second week of work, I’ve been trying to arrange for a test machine to be set up in our lab for me to do the assessment on.  However, there has been a lot of complication and confusion in between.  After lots and lots of email-writing and instant messaging, our machine is finally on its way!  I think we’ll get it by tomorrow, and I can finally start assessing the installation and configuration of our product! :)

***

This PEY experience is definitely quite different from school.  A lot of this reminds me of how I felt at the beginning of last summer when I was developing full-time for Google Summer of Code 2008.  It’s always hard to get started, and I’m trying to constantly remind myself about that.  I sure hope I can contribute more to the team in the near future, and actually be of some help! :)

I just came across this WordPress blogpost congratulating their Google Summer of Code 2009 students.  And at the very bottom, Jane Wells, the author, asks: “Where are all the geek girls?” I’m sure this isn’t a surprise to anybody, but what is surprising is the fact that the number of GSoC applicants went down this year.  This is disappointing, since a lot of us are really trying to get the word out.  Just looking at the University of Toronto for example, we’ve held many info sessions for GSoC 2009.  We even had threads on our department bulletin board answering any questions students might have regarding GSoC.  And I’m sure we’re not the only ones promoting it, so I personally found this very surprising — at first at least.

But now that I stop and think about it, the GSoC application deadline was definitely during one of the busier weeks for post-secondary students.  Thinking back, I was extremely stressed out last year around this time as well, since there were so many assignments and other evaluations to take care of while I was trying to apply for GSoC 2008.  I eventually had to sacrifice my assembly programming assignment to complete my GSoC proposal.  But I’m really glad I did so, because my proposal got accepted, and I still managed to get a passing grade for that one assignment (barely!).

This year, many of my friends considered applying for GSoC.  However, on top of all the deadlines, many of my friends were still looking for PEY internship positions.  So they eventually had to give up this awesome opportunity.  I’m not sure if prolonging the application period would have helped my friends in particular, but I’m sure a lot of students would benefit from the extra few days, and maybe they could work around their busy schedules and submit at least one proposal. :D

For those of you who were unable to apply to GSoC this year, remember to do so next year!  It really was an awesome opportunity for me last year, and it has definitely helped me a lot in finding internship positions.  And for those of you who are wondering what I was working on last summer for GSoC 2008, click here!

We presented to four different classes, two of which were computer science classes, and the rest were computer engineering classes.  The students ranged from grade 10 to grade 12.  So James and I had to make slight changes to the content of our presentation to suit each class and grade.  Overall, the presentations went very well, but both James and I were so familiar with our presentation by the end of the day, we could no longer tell whether or not it was as informative as we wanted it to be.  But I hope that we still got our main messages across.

As expected, the students really liked the ShapeShop and BumpTop demos.  What surprised me was how well the students liked the Twenty-One Game.  I was worried at first because the nature of the game isn’t that exciting.  However, as soon as the students started seeing the pattern (which didn’t take them very long! — kids are so smart nowadays!) they started to get really interested in learning the trick behind the game.  But to get things started, it was all thanks to the Kit Kat bars that James brought along. :)

I definitely had an awesome time at Bayview Secondary yesterday, and I’m sure James did too!  The teachers and the students were very nice!  Hope they enjoyed our presentations!

Thank you Bayview Secondary for having us!

In addition to the ShowCaSe competition that was held in the morning, the Department of Computer Science also had an Open House in the afternoon.  This Open House was slightly different than the March Break Open House we had a few weeks ago.  At yesterday’s Open House, students and their parents got a chance to listen to some of our undergraduate and graduate computer science students share their experiences.  Faculty members also gave the audience more administrative information regarding our program (e.g., what type of courses students will take during their first year…etc.).  Lori and I were fortunate enough to get the chance to speak at the Open House.  Originally, Diane asked me to speak about how excited I am about PEY, considering how I will be starting this May.  However, during our presentation run-through, we realized that I wasn’t able to cover my PEY position and experience in much detail since I haven’t started yet.  So we decided that it would be a better idea if I spoke about the projects that I’ve completed as an undergraduate student thus far, and what I did for Google Summer of Code last year.  I was pretty nervous giving the talk yesterday (I’m not sure if I spoke a little too fast), but I still hope the students benefitted from the content in my presentation.

At the Open House reception, I got a chance to speak to a few graduate students that also spoke at the Open House.  They were telling me how cool grad school is.  I’m not sure why, but ever since last fall, it seems as if I’ve been constantly told how awesome it is to be in grad school.  People keep telling me about how you can pursue in your specific area of interest even further (while being funded), and how it’s something they really like and couldn’t find in the job they were doing before.  I never considered grad school, but I might start thinking about it now.  But as far as I’m concerned right now, I really just want to finish this term and head out to the workforce to get more practical experience.

Yesterday certainly was a busy day! After all the talking throughout the day, I left the reception with a sore throat.  I guess I’m not really used to speaking so much at once!

I think I’ll end this post with an update on the school visits that James and I have been arranging.  Up until know, we have 1 school visit scheduled!  We will be visiting Bayview Secondary School on April 16th!  Definitely looking forward to that!

By the way, I’d like to thank James, Brian, and Veronica for all their help in helping me put yesterday’s talk together!

• March 20th – University of Toronto Faculty of Arts & Science Open House
• March 27th – A prospective student will be visiting (hunting around for the right university)
• April 4th – ShowCaSe Competition & Open House
• Sometime in May – Gr8 Designs for Gr8 Girls Event 

On top of that, James and I have been working very hard in putting together a presentation for our high school visits.  We will be heading out to high schools to tell them about how great computer science is!  Our goal is to educate high school students about what computer science is about, and what kind of experiences they could get at the University of Toronto.

Yesterday, James and I gave Diane a run-through of our presentation.  We got a few more suggestions from her and some of our peers.  Now, we will start contacting high schools to see if anybody is interested.

James also created a really cool Photosynth of Bahen (our computer science building — our home away from home during the school year).  Check it out, it’s really cool!