In ACM SIGCSE Conference, March .
`Experiences with the Webware, Interfaces and Networking
`Experimental Laboratory
`
`David C. Brown, Isabel F. Cruz, David Finkel, Robert E. Kinicki and Craig E. Wills
`Computer Science Department
`Worcester Polytechnic Institute
`Worcester, MA 
`fdcb,ifc,dnkel,rek,cewg@cs.wpi.edu
`
`Abstract
`
`This paper describes our experiences with the Webware,
`Interfaces and Networking Experimental WINE Lab-
`oratory. The WINE Lab was created to assist in teach-
`ing the topics of computer networks, user interfaces and
`webware. The goal of the lab is to provide students the
`opportunity to complete projects, experiment with rel-
`evant techniques and make connections between topics
`with resources not available in a general purpose Unix-
`based computing environment. The results from oer-
`ing courses with the lab show success in meeting these
`goals.
`
`

`

`Markup Language allows browsers to provide more so-
`phisticated interfaces. The growth of the Web and the
`associated framework for development of its technology
`led our department to create a juniorsenior level course
`Webware: Computational Technology for Network In-
`formation Systems" .
`
`Investigation of related work shows there is much discus-
`sion on the use of the Web and the Internet for support
`of teaching computer science courses  . There is also
`work on specialized labs for specic courses , , .
`However at the time of creating the lab, we found no
`references to courses, labs or projects about teaching
`webware or integrating user interfaces and computer
`networks. A survey of other institutions found that re-
`lated laboratories are primarily dedicated to research
`and their impact on undergraduate education at these
`various institutions is unclear. A survey of industrial
`contacts indicated the lab was a good idea and felt it was
`an important one relative to other experience needed by
`our graduating students.
`
`The WINE Lab has been used by students enrolled in
`each of the three courses and by students choosing to
`use its facilities for their senior projects. The academic
`calendar at WPI consists of four -week terms A-B-
`C-D with students typically taking three courses each
`term, each course meeting four times a week. The lab
`was set up during the Fall of the -  academic year
`and used by two courses in the Spring semester of that
`year|Webware C Term and HCI D Term along with
`some senior projects. In the - AY the lab was used
`for four courses|HCI B and D Terms, Networks B
`Term and Webware C Term.
`It was also used for
`more senior projects.
`
`In the remainder of the paper we describe the facili-
`ties of the lab and how it was used. The paper goes
`on to present results based on comments from students
`enrolled in the courses. The paper concludes with a
`summary of our experiences to date.
`
` Laboratory Equipment
`
`The laboratory is equipped with  Pentium-based PCs
`running Windows NT and equipped with audiovideo
`capabilities. In creating the lab, we believed this plat-
`form provided us with the best priceperformance ratio
`for the features we need with a broad range of software
`to choose from. Each machine is equipped with Mi-
`crosoft Oce and Development Studio, which includes
`Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Visual J++, for software
`development. A package of software from Adobe Ac-
`robat, Illustrator, Pagemill and Photoshop allows for
`image manipulation, drawingpainting and document
`production. Six copies of Macromedia Director, a tool
`for multimedia authoring, are also available.
`
`The laboratory machines are connected via a switched
`Ethernet to the campus backbone. Three QuickCam
`Digital cameras are available for use in observing users,
`development of distributed conferencing and generat-
`ing video trac for studies of network trac patterns.
`Three Wacom writing tablets and a Dragon Systems
`speech recognition system are available for experimen-
`tation as alternate input devices. A printer and scanner
`are available in the lab.
`
` Course Projects
`
` . Webware
`
`The WINE Lab has been used twice for the Webware
`course, which were the rst two times this course was
`oered. Detailed experiences with this course are avail-
`able in . As a juniorsenior level course, the contents
`include World Wide Web network protocols, software
`browsers and servers and languages for describing con-
`tent, including languages for both client- and server-side
`active content.
`
`Students have used the lab for a number of projects.
`In one project, the students developed a simplied Web
`browser. This browser did not actually display Web
`pages, but was required to connect to a Web server and
`use the Hypertext Transport Protocol HTTP to re-
`quest pages from the server. The students were required
`to use a Visual C++Windows environment to com-
`plete this assignment; for most students, that meant
`completing the assignment in the WINE Lab. While
`the students were testing their Web browser, they con-
`nected to a Web server within the WINE Lab, to min-
`imize the impact of an ill-behaved program on the rest
`of the campus network.
`
`In other projects, students used the web-development
`tools of the WINE Lab to build personal web sites and
`to create a web-based grocery store. These projects
`exposed students to tools and software such as XML,
`XSL, JavaScript and Perl as they developed both the
`client- and server-side application for the project and
`made use of the Web server in the WINE Lab.
`
`Another pair of projects in one of the course oerings
`assigned the students to develop a Web search engine,
`which included a crawler to discover Web content and
`build an index, and a Common Gateway Interface CGI
`script to accept user search requests, search the index,
`and return a Web page response to the user.
`In the
`follow-on project, students used some form of client-side
`active content e.g., Java, VB Script, Dynamic HTML,
`etc. to allow their search engine to provide dierent
`kinds of searches in response to user requests. In these
`assignments, students were allowed to choose whether
`or not the use the WINE Lab and about half of the
`students used the development environments available
`
`Zynga Ex. 1021, p. 2
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`

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`in the lab.
`
` . Senior Projects
`
` . Human-Computer Interaction
`
`The WINE Lab was used by students for three oer-
`ings of the Human-Computer Interaction course. The
`students worked on a number of assignments, which uti-
`lized the facilities of the lab. One assignment involved
`students creating their own Web page for the course.
`Students used the QuickCam to take a picture of them-
`selves or scanned in a picture with the scanner. Stu-
`dents then created a link from the page to explain their
`design criteria for the page such as metaphors used or
`strategies for aggregating information.
`
`In another project using the lab, students designed and
`built a graphical interface using an interface building
`environment: Visual Basic. This project provided stu-
`dents an opportunity to apply many of the ideas and
`concepts that had been seen in the course. The task
`was to design and build a simple structured help sys-
`tem that used the text found in the Unix manual pages.
`
`One of the nal course projects required students to
`work in design teams to create a movie that tells a sen-
`tence. However, this sentence needed to be understood
`by people called users who did not know the language
`of the people who put the movie together. One such
`sentence given to the students was:
`
`Leo became sad when he was watching the movie
`Titanic", thinking of all the people who sank with
`the ship many years ago.
`
`Students created a design on paper, a storyboard," and
`then used Macromedia Director, a multimedia author-
`ing tool available in the WINE Lab, to tell the sentence
`using pictures, sound and music.
`
` . Computer Networks
`
`The Computer Networks course was taught once us-
`ing the facilities of the WINE Lab for one of
`its
`projects. Because the course overlapped with the Web-
`ware course, the project that used the facilities was de-
`signed as a closed lab" where it could be completed by
`students in a xed amount of time.
`
`This type of closed lab activity also t well with the ex-
`perimental project we introduced in the Networks class.
`The project involved students monitoring and studying
`the network carrying dierent types of trac such as
`interactive, Web retrievals and le transfers. Because
`the machines were dedicated to a single user and con-
`nected via a switched Ethernet, students could control
`the type and amount of network trac being generated
`and received other than spurious broadcast trac.
`
`In the rst year, few senior projects used the lab facil-
`ities because the lab was just set up and most projects
`had already been scheduled. One project that did use
`the lab was one on Java Network Management  . The
`students built on background from the Networks and
`Webware courses to implement a simple Java interface
`using JavaBeans for Simple Network Management Pro-
`tocol SNMP auto-discovery. The development for the
`project was done in the WINE Lab and clearly illus-
`trates the integration of HCI, Webware and Networks
`topics.
`
`There were notable projects using the lab in the second
`year. The Web Site Agent project helped users nav-
`igate a Web site . This project added a suggestion
`service as a separate frame to each web page from a site.
`Another project augmented a version of the Netscape
`Navigator to allow users to view the HTTP trac sent
`and received by the browser . This project involved
`both Webware and Networking issues.
`
` Results
`
`A total of  students were enrolled in at least one
`of the three courses oered during the Spring semester
`of - AY with respective enrollments for each class
`of  for HCI, for Webware and  for Networks.
`A total of   students were enrolled in at least one
`of the ve oerings of the three courses oered dur-
`ing the - AY with respective enrollments for each
`class of for HCI,  for Webware and  for Net-
`works. Obviously some students took more than one of
`the courses. Each one of these students was invited via
`electronic mail to participate in an electronic survey at
`the end of the each academic year. A total of  stu-
`dents took the survey the rst year and  took it the
`second year. Note: Students from three oerings of the
`Networks class were surveyed, but only one of these of-
`ferings used the WINE Lab due to concurrent oering
`with the Webware course and instructor choice. These
`two types of students are distinguished as Networks-
`wl" and Networks-no" with the WINE Lab and no
`WINE Lab in the results below.
`
`The survey focused on the WINE Lab in general and
`more specically on the interaction between topics in
`the three courses. Table shows the percentage of stu-
`dents who agreed with a statement that there is an inter-
`action between topics in two specic courses.  and
` of all students taking the HCI or Webware course
`perceived an interaction between these topics. When
`asked about specic topics. students indicated that web
`page design, menu design, choice of color, use of icons
`and consideration of handicapped users were topics that
`interacted between HCI and Webware. Students taking
`
`Zynga Ex. 1021, p. 3
` Zynga v. IGT
` IPR2022-00199
`
`

`

`the Webware or Networks courses perceived an interac-
`tion between Networks and Webware topics at similar
`levels. Specic NetworksWebware topics listed were
`network protocols, network connections, clientserver
`communication, security issues and network bandwidth.
`Many fewer respondents perceived an interaction be-
`tween topics in HCI and Networks. In listing specic
`topics, students noted the user interface as the applica-
`tion layer in networking and that visualization strategies
`are needed for displaying network information.
`
`Table : Percentage of Students Perceiving an Interac-
`tion Between Topics in Course Pairs
`
`

`

`SIGCSESIGCUE Conference on Integrating Tech-
`nology into Computer Science Education Dublin,
`Ireland, August .
`
`lab machines via the campus network. Given the rel-
`atively large enrollments in these classes, access to lab
`machines is a central issue, which has led us to consider
`more controlled access using group projects and closed
`labs.
`
`Our goals in developing the WINE Lab were to im-
`prove the three courses by providing students the op-
`portunity to complete projects, experiment with rel-
`evant techniques and make connections between top-
`ics that would not be possible in a general pur-
`pose Unix-based computing environment. The results
`thus far show some success in reaching these goals.
`More information about the WINE Lab is available at
`http:www.cs.wpi.eduResourcesWINE.
`
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`Zynga Ex. 1021, p. 5
` Zynga v. IGT
` IPR2022-00199
`
`