CS242 Programming Studio web application

The entire set is available from flickr. Peruse it to see what features are available.

For the past week I have been spending about 6 hours each day getting this web application set up. It's powered by Ruby on Rails and uses MySQL as its database back end. Overall, it was really gratifying creating this application since I got a change to use Textmate, the OS X editor to its fullest and also dabble with more Ruby on Rails, this time around being guided by the excellent Agile Web Development with Rails book.

Right now the application features the following features that I think are rather important based on my experience as a teaching assistant for the class:

• Admin interface that quickly lists all accounts.
• Ability to generate grading rubric based on simple template.
• Students can get feedback quickly.
• Secure system that has user login for access control.
• Intuitive tab based interface.
• Has sidebar for short instructions.
• Clean and simple interface based off Typo and Rapidweaver template.

I will get a movie up for this soon once I verify that it is accepted for use. Also, I will be putting it up on railsplayground.com either on my current hosting plan or a brand new one depending on how easy it would be. Right now there are some future features that I plan to implement:

• Built-in e-mail capabilities to send gradesheet via e-mails to student.
• RSS feed for class announcements.
• Remove restriction that grading rubric has to be a two-level tree structure.
• Implement some AJAX for simple tasks like creating new accounts that have short forms that fit nicely into the current page.

More updates to come. I am glad though that most of the features I envisioned have been implemented.