| Referenced in our Newsletter Volume 3, Issue 9 - September 2004
MIND Lab Integrates Course Data Link Chart Our recent partnership with the University of Maryland's MIND Lab (see VAI News and our recent Press Release) will result in some new and innovative capabilities within VisuaLinks and DIG. This month's Link Chart was actually created by the staff at the MIND Lab to show some basic approaches to integrating different sources of data. With the new school year quickly upon us, the example given is in an academic context looking at course registration data where the results show the process of how a student might search, navigate, and decide on what classes to take for the semester. Importantly, the data collection process was performed utilizing a customized extractor from their web pages. At the MIND Lab, they have started to investigate how to integrate separate data sources. As a preliminary test, we decided to display meaningful relationships in one of the University databases, Testudo, an interactive web service for current students, prospective students, and alumni. Testudo provides comprehensive access to all course information and other services such as admissions, registration, schedules, and other campus services. The MIND Lab created several scripts to spider and parse a year's worth of course information including instructor, section, and major course information, all by department. The information garnered by the scripts was populated into a database and displayed in VisuaLinks. Our example begins by searching for a particular instructor, the MIND Lab director Professor Ashok Agrawala. As shown below, there is only a single entity (TYPE=INSTRUCTOR) with this name. Once identified, we wanted to see if he is scheduled to teach any classes this academic year. In the database, the INSTRUCTOR is directly linked to SECTIONS. After walking the database one level, we find that he will be teaching two sections of CMSC412 this coming fall.  However, unsure of the description for this class, we want to know more detail regarding CMSC412. Walking the database once again, we find out that it is an Operating Systems class as shown by the COURSE icon which connects the two SECTION icons.  Users of this particular system may want to see more information, such as additional SECTIONS. Walking the data one additional time, we discover it is a computer science class (DEPARTMENT) and two additional SECTIONS are also available.  To make a better decision of which SECTION to register for, a student would walk the newly identified sections to discover there was also an additional INSTRUCTOR (Professor Hicks). This process shows how a student could make an informed decision about which class and instructor to choose when creating their class schedule for the academic year.  |