TinkerTeach

Organization:
Carnegie Mellon University

Subcontractors:
None

Principal Investigators:
Jeannette Wing  wing+@cs.cmu.edu (412) 268-3068

David Garlan  garlan+@cs.cmu.edu (412) 268-5056

Mary Shaw       shaw+@cs.cmu.edu (412) 268-2589

Team Members / Graduate Students:
Li-Lun Cheng, John Ockerbloom, Norman Papernick, Greg Zelesnik

Title of Effort:
Educational Infrastructure: Tinker Teach

Objective:
To provide software infrastructure ("glue") for improving interoperability of educational components. This infrastructure should: (a) support automated development of educational materials by instructors for remote access and delivery of courses; and (b) be generic so that it can be applied to domains other than education.

To demonstrate the infrastructure's utility and genericity by instantiating it for multiple instances of different courses.

Approach:
A first step toward building this infrastructure is to find existing "glue" (e.g., document type converters) and create new ones as needed. The second step is to collect all kinds of "glue" into a single place that others can access. It is intended that our infrastructure be generic and not specific to the educational domain or to any specific course. Finally, we need to test out the utility of our software infrastructure. Our approach will lead to the following specific deliverables: (a) a set of new converters and other types of "glue" (wrappers, filters, adaptors); (b) a type converter server that contains both off-the-shelf type converters (e.g., latex2html) as well as new converters (e.g., PowerPoint2html); and (c) on-line instances of two different CMU Master of Software Engineering (MSE) core courses, Models of Software Systems (15-671) and Managing Software Development (15-673) (these will be set up for WWW browsing and distance delivery).

The second deliverable is a broker that can match document conversion needs with software tools that perform relevant conversions. This broker, which we call a Typed Object Manager (TOM) server, itself supplies a set of types (formats) and conversions between types; moreover, it supplies a way to contact and access other TOM servers that supply types and converters it does not itself supply. TOM users can extend a TOM server's capability by adding their own formats and converters. TOM also provides a facility for automatically applying converters, by deducing the input and output types without user guidance. Finally, in the course of building a TOM server, we are populating it with new kinds of converters, for which we have found an immediate need (e.g., the first deliverable).

The last deliverable should demonstrate that our infrastructure is reusable for different courses as well as for different instances of the same course. It has the side benefit of providing the community with two courses, available for remote access and delivery, that are central to many professional software engineering programs.

Recent 96 Accomplishment:
-Developed PowerPoint(tm) to HTML and Postscript to HTML converters. Developed wrappers around existing tools to provide a consistent interface to Microsoft Word(tm) to HTML and LaTeX(tm) to HTML converters.

-Released the TOM server to the CMU community and the CAETI program office.

-Using the above tools, created the on-line instances of two different CMU MSE core courses, Models of Software Systems (15-671) and Managing Software Development (15-673).

FY1997 Plan:
-Release the TOM server to entire research community, including CAETI and ARPA. This release will include a user-friendly interface and supporting documentation (user's manual, on-line help, etc.). A Ph.D. thesis and related research papers will also be produced. The TOM server will enable instructors to create study material from multiple sources, which are likely to be in different formats. This supports the task of putting the MSE courses on-line.

-Completion of three to four MSE core courses on-line. These courses include syllabi, handouts, homeworks, and readings. They will be made available to the entire research and educational communities. Providing these courses on-line is a step toward remote delivery of the MSE courses. This step is consistant with CMU's current educational mission of distance education, in particular for mid-career education, and with the DOD's needs for distance education for the DoDDS.

Technology Transition:
Made publicly available the on-line instances of two different MSE core courses, Models of Software Systems (15-671) and Managing Software Development (15-673). Released the TOM server to the CMU and CAETI communities.
norm@cs.cmu.edu / 1996.7.23