St. Cloud State University theRepository at St. Cloud State Culminating Projects in Computer Science and Department of Computer Science and Information Information Technology Technology 5-2017 Virtual Teaching Assistant: A Web Tool (for C++) Santosh Basnet St. Cloud State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/csit_etds Part of the Computer Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Basnet, Santosh, "Virtual Teaching Assistant: A Web Tool (for C++)" (2017). Culminating Projects in Computer Science and Information Technology. 17. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/csit_etds/17 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology at theRepository at St. Cloud State. It has been accepted for inclusion in Culminating Projects in Computer Science and Information Technology by an authorized administrator of theRepository at St. Cloud State. For more information, please contact [email protected]. VIRTUAL TEACHING ASSISTANT: A WEB TOOL (FOR C++) by Santosh Basnet A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of St. Cloud State University In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Computer Science March 2017 Thesis Committee: Dr. Jie Hu Meichsner Dr. Omar Al-Azzam Dr. Qingjun Jim Chen 2 ABSTRACT With the advancements in technology and popularity of online education, the need for virtual teaching assistance has suddenly risen. Students prefer to get virtual help from teachers and tutors at their convenience and time. A virtual tutor – web tool is an effective way to meet this requirement, which is convenient for both students and teachers. The students at St. Cloud State University expect to have more one-on-one human tutoring, which is hard in regular classroom settings. Especially, this expectation seems more serious for students who take CSCI 201 – Computer Science I (C++). To solve this problem, a virtual tutor - web tool has been proposed to help the students. The virtual tutor is emotive, which can help distant students enhance their understanding of C++. Although this is a blueprint which is used to learn CSCI 201 at St. Cloud State University, this can be applied to any other classes. The tool allows the user to use speech recognition to ask questions to the tool which returns useful answers; to work online with others; and to interact with teachers. In addition, a screen sharing option is also offered to allow users to share the work with each other. Additional services are offered. This tool introduces an easy and better approach to offer extra help to the students in need instead of relying 100% on the traditional approach. In addition, this might reach wider target audiences including senior students who are ready to offer help to the junior students without setting up any traditional face-to-face meetings. This could be a great tool for students with low self-esteem as well. In this document, overall tool design is explained in details, and the major steps in building the tool are outlined. The steps include motivation, background, problem descriptions, scope, research and analysis, design and implementation and testing carried out to develop the virtual tool – web tool. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would first like to thank my thesis committee: Dr. Jie Hu. Meichsner, Dr. Qingjun Jim Chen and Dr. Omar Al-Azzam of the Department of Computer Science at St. Cloud State University. The constructive feedbacks and suggestions were abundant whenever I ran into a trouble spot or had a question about my research or writing. I am thankful for their guidance, constructive criticism and advices during the project. I would also like to thank all the students who were involved in the initial survey for this research project. Without their enthusiastic cooperation and input, the survey couldn't have been effectively conducted. I would also like to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to all my lecturers at the St. Cloud State University (SCSU), Minnesota, USA for providing me the best of practical knowledge such that I was able to use them while developing this tool. I would also like to acknowledge Mr. Muaz Khan whose tutorials and online notes have assisted me successfully completing the project, and I am gratefully indebted to his valuable support to the overall virtual engineer committee in GitHub. Finally, I must express my exceptionally significant appreciation to my friend Ritu Tamang for furnishing me with constant support and encouragement during my time of study and through the process toward researching, developing, and writing this theory. This achievement would not have been conceivable without her. Thank you. Author Santosh Basnet 4 Table of Contents Page Abstract ......................................................................................................................................2 Acknowledgement .....................................................................................................................3 List of Figures ..........................................................................................................................10 List of Tables ...........................................................................................................................13 List of Abbreviations ...............................................................................................................15 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................16 1.1.Chapter Overview ..............................................................................................................16 1.2.Motivation ..........................................................................................................................16 1.2.1. Popularity of Online Education ...........................................................................16 1.2.2. Student’s Issues and Lack of Services to Acknowledge Them ..........................17 1.3.Problem Statement .............................................................................................................17 1.4.Project Scope .....................................................................................................................17 1.5.Main Objectives .................................................................................................................17 1.6.Approach ............................................................................................................................20 1.6.1. Current Solution ..................................................................................................20 1.6.2. Proposed Solution ...............................................................................................21 Chapter 2: Literature Evaluation.........................................................................................23 2.1.Chapter Overview ..............................................................................................................23 2.2.System Analysis .................................................................................................................23 2.3.Similar Tool with Similar Feature Analysis ......................................................................24 2.3.1. Speech Recognition Tools ..................................................................................24 2.3.2. Screen Sharing Tools ..........................................................................................26 2.3.3. Online Communication Tools .............................................................................28 2.4.Similar Tool Analysis ........................................................................................................30 2.4.1. Treehouse ............................................................................................................30 2.4.2. Udemy .................................................................................................................30 2.5.Technical Analysis .............................................................................................................31 5 2.5.1. Speech Recognition.............................................................................................31 2.5.2. Screen Sharing ....................................................................................................32 2.5.3. Online Chat Communication ..............................................................................33 2.5.4. Other Features .....................................................................................................34 Chapter 3: Requirements and Specifications ......................................................................35 3.1.Chapter Overview ..............................................................................................................35 3.2.Web Tool User Roles .........................................................................................................35 3.3.Functional Requirements ...................................................................................................35 3.4.Non-Functional Requirements ...........................................................................................37 3.5.Resource Requirements .....................................................................................................37 3.5.1. Software Requirements