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PROJECT OVERVIEW A website will be developed to enable engineering students to perform online analysis and design of diverse applications in water resources engineering, including hydraulics, hydrology, water quantity, and water quality. The website will be powered by a Sun Blade 1000, an UltraSPARC-III-based workstation/server suited for compute-intense applications. The website has been initially developed under the domain name onlinecomp.sdsu.edu. This proposal requests resources to enhance and expand the site, which currently resides on the P.I.'s personal workstation. The site was created in response to the perceived need to use the power of the web more effectively. Increasingly, students around the country are using the web for many applications. A logical extension of this trend is to build into the web the ability to perform computations by means of legacy programs, CGI scripts, and web-oriented languages such as PERL and PHP. The P.I. has recently developed onlinecomp.sdsu.edu to accomplish this task. As development continues and the site grows in size and popularity, it is expected that it will require its own power to remain responsive. The primary audience for this project is civil engineering undergraduate students across the United States. The Principal Investigator has been active on the web for the past several years. In June 1999, he started the intensive development of http://ponce.sdsu.edu, an example of web-absed practice which now comprises more than 200 links. Once the website was able to convey useful information (passive mode), the next step was to include the capability to perform online computations (active mode). The onlinecomp.sdsu.edu site makes it possible for visitors to interact with a computer program directly on the web, by accessing online documentation, browsing through sample data sets, entering input, running (executing) the program, and recording (examining) the output. This proposal requests resources to expand, support, power, and continue this effort in web-based engineering education. An intrinsic part of the proposed research is to involve undergraduate students in the development and implementation of web-based scripts. Given the web's popularity and ubiquitous presence, the need for online computing and education is now more apparent than ever. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES The overall objective is to support the continued development of onlinecomp.sdsu.edu. The project requests release time (quarter-time for the first year and one eight-time for the second year) for the Principal Investigator, and funds to purchase equipment and support student assistants during the project duration (2 years). Once operational, the website will be readily accessible by undergraduate engineering students in universities across the U.S. The site will be used for curricular applications in engineering hydrology, engineering hydraulics, open-channel hydraulics, and water-resources engineering. Dissemination of the site is an intrinsic component of the proposed project (See "Outcomes"). The goal is to implement up to one hundred (100) scripts to solve a variety of problems in hydraulics, hydrology, and water resources engineering. Currently, the site has nine (9) operational computer programs running on beta testing mode. Issues of format, ease of utilization, and security will become important as development of the site continues beyond its initial stage. The objective is to merge software components such as HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), XML (Extended Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), CGI (Common Gateway Interface), PERL (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language), PHP (Personal Home Page), and the legacy programs written in traditional languages such as C, C++, Basic, and Fortran. (Many legacy programs, developed prior to the Internet age, can be effectively incorporated into the mainstream in this way, saving associated development costs). The aforementioned components will be merged into a seamless system such that the visitors, primarily undergraduate civil engineering students across the U.S., are dealing with input, output, and the appropriate online documentation. The ease, convenience, and universal access of the web is its most powerful vantage point. A related and equally important objective is to develop onlinecomp.sdsu.edu for tutorials in water-resources engineering related to hydraulic and hydrologic computations. For instance, a link explaining the concepts of the storage-indication method of reservoir routing, its applicability, data requirements, computational procedure, algorithms, and limitations, is envisioned. The tutorial section will effectively complement onlinecomp.sdsu.edu so that visitors can have a more meaningful learning experience. The proposal requests funds to employ undergraduate students in the development and implementation of web-based scripts. Students will be actively engaged in assisting the Principal Investigator in the continued development of onlinecomp.sdsu.edu. Actual online computations in engineering are a relatively new and far-reaching endeavor. The P.I. has researched search engines and websites in educational institutions across the U.S., and has not found a site similar to onlinecomp.sdsu.edu. Thus, the P.I. believes that this is the only currently available non-commercial site dealing with hydraulic and hydrologic engineering online computations. DETAILED PROJECT PLAN The project will develop onlinecomp.sdsu.edu to be used by undergraduate engineering students across the U.S. The students will be able to run computer programs and view tutorial pages about topics related to hydraulic, hydrologic and water-resources engineering. In these times, it is paramount that the power of the power be used not only to retrieve information but also to create information. This will lead to increased productivity and resulting benefits. Project Features To accomplish the project objectives, the following steps are envisioned:
Background The Principal Investigator has been active on the web for several years. In 1997, he initiated the development of http://ponce.sdsu.edu. Eventually, the P.I. developed his webpage into a website, with more than 200 links and 1000 pages. As the website grew in size and complexity, the P.I. developed a classification system based on the Dewey Decimal System to help visitors navigate the site more effectively. After organization, the P.I's website was ready to be used for web-based practice, a philosophy of computer use by which the individual person works exclusively on the web, including e-mail, communications, reports, presentations, marketing, research, publishing, learning, teaching, biodata, etc. Since 1999, the P.I. has been actively involved in web-based practice. The first major task was to post all the P.I.'s journal papers on the web, followed by research reports and other accounts of projects, current and past. The development of the onlinecomp.sdsu.edu site required the implementation of CGI scripting in conjunction with the PERL language. For the "proof of concept", the P.I. used several of the computer programs already available as part of his textbook Engineering Hydrology, Principles and Practices (Prentice Hall, 1989), and other hydraulic programs developed over the years while teaching Open-channel Hydraulics. The following programs were implemented on onlinecomp.sdsu.edu:
Project Plan The project plan consists of the following steps:
Project Timetable The onlinecomp.sdsu.edu website will be fully operational at the end of the two-year project duration. The timetable includes planning for equipment purchase, delivery of equipment, installation, testing, and software implementation. Full development of the site will start as soon as project funds are available. Facilities and Resources The SUN Blade 1000 workstation will be housed in the College of Engineering Building. The installation of the workstation will be performed under the supervision of Christopher Paolini, Unix Systems Administrator. The purpose of the workstation will be exclusively to support online.sdsu.edu, including development and actual usage. EXPERIENCE AND CAPABILITY OF THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR Dr. Victor M. Ponce has more than thirty (30) years of experience in civil engineering, hydraulics, hydrology, water resources engineering, and computational modeling. His experience in computational modeling began in 1973, when he was a doctoral student in the Hydraulics and Hydrology Program at Colorado State University. In this capacity, he developed many computer programs to solve unsteady flow problems in water and sediment routing. In 1980, the P.I. became Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at San Diego State University. From the start, he took responsibility for the hydrology/hydraulics portion of the curriculum, and was assigned to teach CEE445 (Applied Hydrology) and CE530 (Open-channel Hydraulics). Throughout the 1980's, the P.I. taught these classes by emphasizing computer applications, including the development and use of computer programs. The P.I.'s textbook, Engineering Hydrology, Principles and Practices, published in 1989 by Prentice Hall, included several hydrology computer programs in the Appendix. Since 1980, the P.I. has also taught the freshman undergraduate course "Computer Applications in Engineering" (E-120). In the past 10 years, the P.I. has published more than twenty papers in leading scientific and professional journals (see Biodata). Most of these papers have a computational component; moreover, many of them have been coauthored with SDSU students. Over the past three years, the P.I. has been very active on web development for educational applications. His website ponce.sdsu.edu is a good example of web-based practice, with more than 200 links dedicated to teaching, research, and service, reaching a broad audience throughout the world.
EVALUATION PLAN The proposed project will be evaluated according to procedures and criteria established by NSF. The evaluation will be conducted by an ad-hoc team especially constituted for this purpose. The team consists of professionals of recognized stature, who are experts in their respective fields. The evaluation team will consist of the following professionals: (1) an expert in computational applications, (2) an expert in web-based practice and online applications, (2) an expert in the teaching of hydrology and water resources, and (3) an expert in hydrologic engineering practice. The following individuals have been selected for the evaluation team:
The evaluation plan for this project consists of three parts:
The planning evaluation will assess understanding of the project's goals, objectives, strategies, and timelines. It will also serve the purpose of describing the status of key outcome indicators prior to the project to serve as a baseline for measuring success. The planning evaluation will be performed within two months of project funding. The formative evaluation will assess ongoing project activities. It begins at project start-up and continues throughout the life of the project. It consists of implementation evaluation and progress evaluation. The purpose of the implementation evaluation is to assess whether the project is being conducted as planned. The purpose of the progress evaluation is to assess progress in meeting the project goals. The formative evaluation, both implementation and progress, will be conducted twice during the project life; the first after six months of project start, and the second 12 months later. The summative evaluation will assess the project's success. It takes place after ultimate modifications and changes have been made, after the project has been stabilized and after the impact of the project has had a chance to be realized. The summative evaluation will be conducted at the end of the two-year project duration.
A comprehensive evaluation plan will be developed to determine the extent to which onlinecomp.sdsu.edu will satisfy its goals and objectives, and to propose alternative strategies, if necessary. At a minimum, the plan will assess the following:
The outcome of the proposed research will consist of the following:
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