Wspomaganie realizacji studenckich grupowych projektów IT – rozwój systemu SVN i przykłady zastosowania

Rozwój wdrożonego systemu obejmuje funkcjonalność związaną z generowaniem raportów wg rozmaitych kryteriów (np. nazwisko prowadzącego) oraz zmianę wizualizacji danych. Wykorzystanie przeglądarki internetowej jako warstwy prezentacji daje możliwość zdalnego śledzenia rozwoju prac, również na urządzeniach mobilnych. Wdrożenie systemu kontroli wersji w ramach zajęć z udziałem grup projektowych skutecznie wspomaga proces nabywania kompetencji miękkich związanych z pracą w grupie.

The system was originally designed, implemented and deployed in the academic year 2011/12 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Telecommunications, University of Zielona Gora, Poland. The purpose of the project was to support teaching activities during the of student group work. The system development includes change in the reporting functionality to widen the reporting criteria; the other change is upgrade of visualization mechanisms. Reports are generated in two steps: (1) data collecting, based on Unix-specific mechanisms such as cyclic script execution and pipelining, (2) acquired data processing and report generating. Implementation of the new functionality requires exploiting, besides the currently employed SVN repository server [3], additional solutions: (1) Apache web server, (2) PHP module (implementation of data processing and consolidation), (3) XML module (data collecting and processing) and (4) GD module (online graphic generation [4]). The use of a web browser as the presentation layer gives ability to track students work remotely, even from mobile devices. Implementation of the version control system in the student group work courses supports learning the soft skills associated with group work effectively. Further development of the system will cover: (1) separate access levels, based on username and password authentication as well as (2) simplifying new repositories creation process.