Going live with Mesa Online
This morning we went live with Mesa Online, a website for students taking Spanish courses in the World Languages department. The idea behind the Mesa program is that students sign-up for a time to have lunch or dinner with a small group of students and one faculty member. During the lunch or dinner, all conversation must be in Spanish. The previous sign-up system involved a large list of timeslots posted on the wall. My Fall 2008 software engineering class took upon themselves the task of converting the paper-based system to an online system. I helped the students bring the project to a conclusion just in time for it to go live today for the Spring 2009 semester. As of 3:00PM, exactly 100 students have created their Mesa accounts. There is still work left to be done on the administrative part of the website, but I will post updates as the semester progresses and as we see whether the system effectively meets the needs of the World Languages Department here at Samford.
January 30th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
It looks like their project came to more of a realization than ours did. It looks like it was coded in PHP as well instead of Java.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Yes, I think one advantage that this class (Fall 2008) had over your class (Fall 2006) is that I had worked out most (but not all) of the bugs related to CVS, server hosting, etc… for the development phase so that we could dive right into the project. Also, one semester just isn’t enough time to roll out a real-world project. This one wouldn’t have been finished either if it hadn’t been for Kyle and Greg’s work over Jan term along with my 40+ hours of coding alongside them. Also, I think I have found PHP to be an easier language for students to pick up then JSPs and Java servlets. What are you programming in these days?
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Personally, I’m still primarily coding in PHP but of course my job requires Java. I know PHP has some limitations, but I feel its a much more friendly language and no where near as frustrating as Java can be due to dependencies at times. So many variables at play with classpath and environments and versions… I just like the simplicity of setting up an Apache server with mod_php!