Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Web Portal for Software Engineering Courses Dejan Rančić, Slobodanka Đorđević-Kajan, Ivan Milentijević

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project What is a portal? As with many internet terms, the word "portal" has: –appeared in the online vocabulary very quickly –been adopted by several different web site models –been applied to almost anything (!) –already spawned several variations - vortal, personal portal, and so on So, rather than try to give a direct answer to the question "what is a portal ?", it may be more practical to answer "what does a portal do ?" and "what kinds of sites might be called portals ?".

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project What Does a Portal Do? (Part I) The word "portal" now means different things to different people, so a single definition is no longer possible. There are however, distinctive features and facilities that appear on sites that could be described as portals: Focus Portals typically concentrate on one subject - an interest, a business sector, or an individual company (external or internal).The main benefit of the portal approach is to save the users time by removing much of the "noise" of the internet, and identifying the sites and content likely to be of most relevance.

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project What Does a Portal Do? (Part II) Variety Within any focused portal, a variety of content is typically offered. The objective of most portal builders is to create an environment that will become the users' home page - the place from where they start their browsing, and the place they consistently return to. Aggregation Pulling together content from disparate sources is a main portal function. The benefit to the user is that someone else is spending time identifying and packaging content and services that are most likely to be of interest to them, avoiding duplication, and concentrating attention on the best fit items.

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project What Does a Portal Do? (Part III) Interaction Portals understand that user interaction is a key aspect of creating a "sticky" site, and so services that generate user input and "return to see" actions are common."sticky" site Dynamic Real time information is a common portal feature. Personalisation To avoid users being tempted away by a portal that better fits their needs, many portals - especially horizontal portals - allow their users to change aspects of the portal to suit them. This might include which components are displayed, the layout of the portal, inclusion of personal information, and so on.

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project What Does a Portal Do? (Part IV) Community Although most portals provide some form of content, many rely significantly on their user base to provide content in various forms - specialist expertise, advice, resource recommendations, reviews, discussion, feedback. Selection Quality control and pre-selction of information and resources. Directory Some form of directory of links is at the heart of most portals. Only subject-specific relevant links are included

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Vs. Home Page Home page Static content Same content for all Aim: To inform Portal Dynamic content Different content for different users Aim: To enable some kind of business

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Techniques and Methods of programming: Portal for the course

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Techniques and Methods of programming: the course organisation Course activities: Labs : – UML – Visual C/C++ – Rational Rose – Rational SODA Student projects: –RUP – Visual C/C++ Exam: – Written part – Oral part PORTAL

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Exam statechart diagram Portal

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Interaction with portal

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Technology PHP + MySQL

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project Conclusions One public place for all activities related to course Up to date informing Easy course material distribution (docs, models, code, …) Less “face to face” communication between students and teachers

Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš - TEMPUS project …one important thing This portal is realised as a student project at Techniques and methods of programming course…