The Virtual Community Project Researchers - David Molloy & Derek Molloy The concept of the Virtual Community Project was established during the summer 2000. The need for such a project was made clear to the individuals involved, while attempting to manage the Remote Access to Continuing Engineering Education (RACeE) programme. This innovative programme, the first of it's kind in DCU, allows students to undertake postgraduate level courses on an almost entirely remote basis. Some of the difficulties in running such a programme lay in the ability to tutor, manage and interact with the students involved, providing them with a "similar" experience of the modules involved. The current incarnation of the Virtual Community Project allows the following: Management of information on registered students Personalised homepages (portal pages) for all registered students Personalised homepages for all staff members in the School The ability to manage and store information on students and modules Creation of detailed surveys, including Module Assessment Surveys Graphical analysis of survey results. Creation of dynamic, online continuous assessments. Automatic access file creation dependent on student registration. Community Messaging System within VCP A user-based security/profile management module. A web client-device independent content rendering module. The system while in only beta release version 1.0, is currently accessible by Electronic Engineering staff in DCU and is used by 120 postgraduate students, approximately half of which are undertaking modules remotely. The structure of the VCP System can be seen below: While not directly modifying data on the DCU database, the system operates on a read-only view of this primary information, coupled with additional information required by the system (which is not stored anywhere on the DCU database). The diagram below shows the database tier in more detail: Some examples of screen shots can be selected below in order to give an idea of the working system (which obviously cannot be accessed to to security restrictions!). Please note that these are simply screen captures - they have no functionality. Sample Lecturer Homepage (with Administrator Privilages) Sample Student Homepage (postgraduate online) Student Information Example Survey Creation Tool Sample Survey Survey Results For more information on the Virtual Community Project please contact David Molloy through   or at +353 1 7008426. Back to the Main Page

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