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November 2008 Calendar

CS Masters' Thesis Defense

Title: An Ajax-Based Mail User Agent (Mua) For Course Management Systems
Speaker: Qibing Chen
Date: Friday, November 21, 2008
Time: 1:00 p.m.
Location: GMCS 307
Thesis advisor: Dr Subrata Bhattacharjee

Abstract:
AJAX brings a whole new level of feedback and flexibility to web applications and improves the user experience by making interactive web applications more responsive. In this thesis, we use AJAX technology in the design and implementation of a mail user agent (MUA) for a course management system called ClassTA.

ClassTA is a web-based course management system based on AJAX technology. It can be used as a teaching assistant for educators from grade school to graduate school. It is intuitive, efficient, secure, responsive and scalable. ClassTA provides a desktop-like user interface which enables drag and drop functionalities. ClassTA implements tools for educators and students to be interactive online. These functionalities include a quiz builder technology that enables students to take online tests, a unique blog facility that not only encourages students to participate in course discussions, but also gives the educator the ability to drag and drop files, share documents, manage group students, create a wiki for the entire class or different groups to view grade histograms and rate each test question, optional automatic grading, and background data synchronization for multiple parallel sessions.

The MUA described here serves as an interface to email systems for any course management system. For the purpose of this thesis, we have integrated this MUA into ClassTA to offer mail management features for handling mail tasks such as composing messages, adding or removing cc and bcc email addresses, attaching files, adding dates, customizing email bodies, and sending messages. There are two kinds of uses for this MUA in ClassTA: One is for educators to manage students. Educators can arrange students into different groups then send group emails with student?s first and last name automatically. A second use is for regular email functions. The MUA uses SMTP for sending messages to mail servers for relaying as a SMTP client. In the future, we can extend this MUA to be used for different AJAX based course management systems.
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