TA-Online (Teaching Assistant Services)

Abstract

Teaching Assistants for the lower level computer science courses at the University of Maryland all hold their office hours in one room. When a Teaching Assistant is in and many students arrive for help, a waitlist needs to be maintained. After observing the current state of office hours, we find that the system can be improved by automating some of these processes. We examine this idea and develop a system to increase the efficiency of office hours by using computers for various office hour tasks. This includes student sign in, Teaching Assistant sign-in and waitlist maintenance, and office hour room status monitoring. We give a usability test of our system to students and Teaching Assistants. We present the results and evaluate suggested improvements to our system.

Credits

Student Sign In - Nabby Cheung

Office Hour Room Monitor - Eric Lee

TA Waitlist Monitor - Cihan Tas

1. Introduction

Each semester, hundreds of undergraduate students at the University of Maryland at College Park take lower level computer science courses. These classes include CMSC 106, 114, 214, 250, 311, and 330. Some of these classes require large programming projects or have difficult homework. Each of these courses offers Office Hours for students to get help outside of class. Office hours are run by Teaching Assistants (TA’s). They are held for a particular class at various times during the week. When a particular class has scheduled office hours, the Teaching Assistant will be available for students in that class to come and seek help for programming projects, homework assignments, class material, etc.

All office hours are held in the same room, A.V. William 1151. We will call this the Office Hour Room.

Figure 0. Office Hour Room and White Board

There are certain protocols currently used during office hour sessions in the Office Hour Room. The room has two white boards. One white board on the side is for people to use for teaching or working out problems. The other board is at the front of the room. When a Teaching Assistant is holding office hours, they sign-in by putting a post on the white board at the front of the room so that students will know that their TA is in the Office Hour Room and is available. They post their name, the class they are a TA for, and the hours they will be available. This post is usually drawn in a box.

When a student arrives at the Office Hour Room for help, they will look at the white board in the front and see if a TA for their class is holding office hours. If the student sees that there is a TA who is available to help, they will look around the room to find that TA. There may be more than one TA for a particular class who hold office hours at the same time. The Office Hour Room has many tables and chairs for people to sit and discuss. Against the walls, there are computers for the TA’s to use for personal use (when they are not helping students) or to help students with.

During peak times, such as the day before a major programming project is due, many students in the class with the project due may attempt to seek help in office hours. If many students arrive for a class and all the available TA’s for their class are currently occupied helping other students, then a waitlist is needed to keep track of who is next to be helped. A waitlist, basically just a list of names, can be kept track of on a piece of paper or on a white board. It operates on the First in First Out (FIFO) queue policy. As students arrive, they add their name to the end of the list. As students are finished receiving help, the TA crosses their name off the list.

There are some problems that currently exist with the way office hours are run. The room can be very messy and disorganized. This can lead to communication problems when office hours are very busy and the room is crowded. One problem is that sometimes students are unable to find their TA. They enter the room, look at the white board and see the name of their TA. However, they are unfamiliar with this person. The student may look around hopelessly at the people in the office hour room and be too shy to ask who the TA is. After feeling uncomfortable that people are now starting to stare, the student leaves the Office Hour Room without getting help. Other students avoid this problem by knowing who their TA is and recognizing them, or by verbally announcing their search for their TA to everyone in the Office Hour Room, in which case their TA notices them and responds.

Another problem is that when office hours becomes really crowded and busy, it is hard for a TA to accurately manage the waitlist. In these cases, it is sometimes unclear who is actually next. Another scenario may be that a student signs in on the wait list but the wait is very long, so the student decides to leave the Office Hour Room and go to a nearby lab to get some work done. However, when the student returns later, they find that they have missed their turn to be helped as their name has been passed by on the waitlist.

Another problem is that sometimes a TA forgets to sign-in and post their information on the board. As a result, when students glance at the white board in the front of the Office Hour room, they think there is no TA available to help them.

Our group saw these scenarios occur in office hours and wanted to come up with a system to solve some of them. We first wanted to do research and see what products or technologies were currently out there that are related to our topic.

One scenario that is similar to ours is the long waiting lines that exist at the Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) building in Gaithersburg, MD. The MVA provides many essential services and as a result is almost always very crowded. There are a couple different services they provide in different parts of the building and each has its own line. The MVA uses an electronic system to manage its long lines. When a person enters the building, they much check in at a central desk. They tell the worker at the desk what service they are trying to get and the worker will direct them to the appropriate place in the building and if necessary give them a number. When the person arrives at their service area, there is a digital display on the wall that displays the current number of the person being helped. The people can sit and relax in the waiting area while waiting for their number to appear. This is basically a FIFO queue. It is an orderly way for people to be assigned a turn and for them to be able to estimate how long their turn will take to come. People can look at the current number being served and compare it with their number. The website for Maryland MVA has a section called MVA Office Hours, Locations and Service Information for Montgomery Country, where you can find out information about the estimated wait times at the MVA. This sort of remote access to wait time status would be useful in our system.

2. Our System Design

The solution we came up with is a system that is comprised of three parts that function separately but share information. The three parts are the Student Sign-In, the Office Hour Room Monitor, and the Teaching Assistant Sign-In. These parts help solve some of the problems found in the office hour room. Using the Student Sign-in, students are able to electronically put themselves on a waitlist and know what their TA looks like when they first step into the room, which eliminates the problems of writing their name onto a waitlist or having trouble finding their TA. The Office Hour Room Monitor keeps organization within the office hour room by showing the information of each TA for the aforementioned classes, and the names of the students on the waitlists for each of these classes. This monitor automatically updates as students or TA’s enter and leave the room. The TA Sign-In allows the TA’s to manage and control the waitlist for their class, as well as know who the next student in line is and information about the student.

2.1 Student Sign-In

When a student walks into the office hour room in A.V. Williams, there will be a computer next to the door. The computer will run the student sign-in portion of our system. When a student walks into the room, they will sign in using our system. The information will automatically add the student to the correct waitlist on the TA’s monitor and the office hour monitor inside the room. After the student has been helped, the TA will remove the student’s name from the waitlist, and the student will leave.

The first screen (Figure 1) allows the student to sign in. The student types in their name and clicks OK. If a card reader is added to our system, the student will also have the option of swiping their student ID card instead of typing their name.

Figure 1. Student Sign-In

On the next screen (Figure 2), the student chooses which class they would like help in. The system offers waitlists for CMSC 106, 114, 214, 250, 311, and 330, because most students only come into office hours for help in these classes. The student chooses one of the classes from the dropdown menu and clicks OK.

Figure 2. Course Selection

The last screen (Figure 3) shows the student a picture of the TA that is currently available for the class they want help in. It also shows the TA’s name, which class they are a TA for, the hours they will be in, and which computer they are sitting at, if any. The screen will let the student know what number they are in line on the waitlist. The student will click OK and finish signing in.

Figure 3. TA Information

The student sign in portion of our system is very easy to use. It should take a student less than a minute to sign in so that they can receive help quickly, and allow other students to also sign in quickly. The most important feature of the system is displaying the name and picture of the TA so that students who come into office hours will have less trouble finding their TA.

2.2 Office Hour Room Monitor

Inside the office hours room there will be a big screen monitor that people will be able to publicly view. This monitor will run the Office Hours Status program. This program displays real time information about office hours such as which TA’s are on duty and waitlist information, for each class. TA’s are the teaching assistants who give help to students with their course work. If student has come to get help from the TA but the TA is currently helping someone, then there is a waitlist. The first person to sign in on the waitlist will be helped next. The second person to sign in will be helped after, and so on. The Office Hours Status program looks like this:

Figure 4. Office Hour Status Monitor

Figure 4 shows the Office Hour Status monitor. Our system is only concerned with the 300-level and below courses. These courses are displayed on the screen as CMSC 106, CMSC 114, etc. When a TA signs in to the system, the Office Hour monitor will add the information about the course the TA signs in for. For each course, if there is a TA on duty, the TA’s picture, name, and hours on duty are displayed. If there is more than one TA on duty for the course, the screen will display the information for each TA for a few seconds at a time in the same location.

Below the TA information, if there are students waiting to be helped for a particular course, the waitlist is displayed. If the number of students on the waitlist cannot all be displayed on the waitlist at the same time, the waitlist automatically scrolls like a ticker tape. At the bottom of the monitor, important announcements for the various classes are displayed.

2.3 Teaching Assistant Sign-In

As mentioned before, the TA-Online system consists of three parts: the TA part, the student part and the remote access part. This section talks about the TA part of the project.

2.3.1 TA Sign-In

The TA part has access to various special functions, which have to be in a secure environment. Because of this, the system is protected by a password system. When the TA comes in, s/he will be asked for his/her name and password (Figure 5). If these properties match with the ones in the database, then the system gives permission to the TA to use the program. The password window looks like this:

Figure 5. TA Sign-In

In our extensive program, we are planning to do this part from the system itself. The TA information can be gathered from the system without entering necessary information. However, there are some disadvantages of this kind of functionality. First, instructors have permission to change everything on the system about their courses, while the TA’s do not. Taking this property into consideration, it is meaningful to keep the Sign-In window available, since the instructors may want to restrict some capabilities from some of the TA’s on the system. For example, it is possible that an instructor does not want his/her undergraduate TA’s to hold office hours, and s/he may want to restrict these TA’s from accessing the system.

2.3.2 Session Information

When the TA passes this window, the next window (Figure 6) is basically being used for the TA session information entrance. In our program, we are planning to get some basic information about the TA such as the courses s/he is TAing for. The TA can select his/her course from the list provided.

Also, the information about the start and finish times of the session should be entered. It is very likely that some errors may occur here. We tried to catch as many errors as we could. For example, if the finish time has already passed, then the system warns the user about the time and does not proceed further.

In addition to these, a new functionality has been added. The TA can select the table that s/he is going to use for his/her session. We were planning to do this automatically, since it was assumed that the necessary information would be gathered from the system that the user logged on. There are some TA’s that prefer not to use computers, for example the TA’s of the courses that do not require programming. Also, right now there are not enough computers in the TA room for every TA.

In this window, the user can select the table s/he is going to use, and with the necessary other information, s/he can sign in.

The Cancel button exits from the entire system with confirmation.

Figure 6. Table selection and information entry

2.3.2 Main System Menu

The next window (Figure 7) is the main window, which is the main functionality with the TA duties. The TA can see the students that are waiting at the moment. Clicking on the student gives the selected student’s grade history. His/her actual grades, with his/her position in the entire class with the averages of the items are displayed.

The TA can remove one of the students from the list by clicking the Remove Student button. The removed student is removed from the list entirely. The statistics about the current session and the semester are displayed as Office Hour Statistics. This information is updated continuously.

Figure 7. TA Waitlist Monitor

The Undo operation is used for the removed students. If a student is removed by mistake, s/he can be re-added easily by clicking this button.

The Report button is designed for instructors, and TA's are not privileged to use it. Its basic functionality is to provide some statistical information about the overall sessions. Information about the TA's can also be obtained with this option. For example, an instructor may want to figure out who the most popular TA is.

The time part consists of four parts. The first two parts are the Start and Finish times and this information is gathered from the previous window. The current time is the actual time, and the one with the largest characters is the time remaining for the actual session. This is designed to give the TA an idea about the time remaining, making him/her adjust himself/herself accordingly to it.

The LogOff button is for logging off from the entire system with confirmation, and the Help stands as it is.

Figure 8. TA Announcement Monitor

In addition to the waitlist feature, we have added the announcement functionality to the system. This may be used for general or course-specific announcements for the students, or it may be used for common questions TA's come across.

The switch action between the Announcement and Waitlist functionality is done by command buttons that are located at the bottom most side of the page.

The display information about the TA and the course, which is discussed in previous sections, is accessed from a database. It is the TA's choice to change his/her information. We are giving this ability to the user TA's in these two menus. They can change the data about them here, like changing their photograph on the sign-in part.

3. Development Process

3.1 Evolution of our system

Two of the members of our group are currently Teach Assistants. They have experienced some of the flaws in the current office hour system. So we came up with the idea of the TA-Online system. The initial idea was for a multipart system. The system should enable students to automatically sign in, possibly by swiping their ID card in a reader. Maybe the card reader could automatically determine what courses the student was enrolled in. We then decided that having an entire database system for all possible students that indicated what computer science classes they were enrolled in would be too unrealistic. So we thought there would need to be a way for students to specify what class they were taking when they signed in because this could not be determined automatically. The idea of a touch screen was tossed around but ultimately, we needed a way for students to type in their name so we decided to use a computer or kiosk with a keyboard for the student sign in part of the system. There is an optional card reader for students who have there ID’s with them. Another part of our system that we thought of was a way for the teaching assistants to work with waitlists. We thought it would be easier to for TA’s to be able to do this electronically. Since most TA’s use a computer during office hours, we decided to have an application running on their computer that would enable them to monitor and manipulate the waitlist. We also needed a way to publicly display office hour information, such as which TA’s are on duty and the current waitlist for a particular class. We decided a huge monitor in the front of the Office Hour room would be appropriate for this task. It would be similar to monitors displaying flight information at airports.

After we had discussed and refined some of our ideas, our system design was becoming clearer. We proceeded to develop some low-fidelity prototypes of our system. These low-fidelity prototypes were basically screen shots as to how the interfaces of our system might look like. A low-fidelity prototype of the Student Sign-In is in Figure 9. A low-fidelity prototype of the Office Hour Room Monitor is shown in Figure 10. Initially we thought it might be implemented on a two panel monitor which is why it has two screens. A low-fidelity prototype of the TA Waitlist Monitor is shown in figure 11.

Figure 9. Low fidelity of Prototype of Student Sign-In

Figure 10. Low Fidelity Prototype of Office Hour Room Monitor

Figure 11. Low Fidelity Prototype of TA Waitlist Monitor

We came up with another set of low fidelity prototypes and picked one that we thought was promising. We then further refined our idea and implemented it. The student sign in would be a kiosk with card reader. The Office Hour room monitor would be on one large screen monitor in the front of the Office Hour room. The TA Waitlist application would be run by TA’s on the computers in the office hour room. If a TA did not have access to a computer, there would be a touch screen running the TA Waitlist application that they could use. We built the high fidelity-prototype and designed a usability test. The tests are described in the next section. We divided the tests into two parts. We tested the Student Sign-In and waitlist usage separately from the TA Sign-In and waitlist maintenance, so there is a usability test for Students and a usability test for Teaching Assistants

3.2 Student Usability Test

Before giving the student sign in portion of the usability test to our subjects, they were told of their scenario. They were told that a kiosk running the Student Sign-In application would be in place right inside the door to the office hour room and the system they are testing would be a simulation. They were also told that the Office Hour monitor would replace the white board that is currently in the room. For student task number four, our subjects were given a piece of paper with six pictures on it to represent the TA’s in the office hour room.

These are the tasks we gave to the students:

You have arrived at the entrance to the office hour room.

1. Write down what time it is now: _______

2. Sign in by typing in your name.

3. Choose your class.

4. Pretend the following piece of paper represents a bunch of real people in the office hour room. Please point to your TA.

5. Write down what time it is now: _______

6. Look at the monitor and find out how many people are currently in line for your class: __

7. Also on the monitor, find out what place you are in line: ___

3.2.1 Usability Test Results

Student 1 is a female who has never taken a computer science course before. We tested her as a representative of students who might be taking a computer science class for their first time and have never gone to office hours for this major. Therefore she does not have an office hour room experience. However, if she were to go to the office hour room and did not know who her TA was, she would ask around until she found the person. This student does feel comfortable with computers but the feeling is not very strong (6/9, 9 = very comfortable). Student 1 heavily uses a computer throughout the week (90 hours). She has used a touch screen before.

Student 1 was able to successfully complete the tasks she was asked to do. She did not understand the context of what these applications were for, having never gone to office hours, so she asked questions.

Student 1 thought that the program helped a little, but not a lot, to find her TA. She thought it was very easy to use the program but she did not think the program was very useful. She suggested that we could improve the program with more thorough explanations.

Student 2 is a female computer science student. She goes to office hours once in a while and almost never has trouble finding her TA in the office hour room. If she came to the office hour room and did not know who her TA was, she would definitely ask around to find out. On average Student 2 has to wait 10-20 minutes before it is her turn to be helped. She also has had to wait on a waitlist before. Student 2 feels the current paper sign-in sheets are not very useful at all in estimating her waiting time. Student 2 feels pretty comfortable with computers. She is a heavy computer user and she has used a touch screen before.

Student 2 did not have any trouble completing the tasks we gave to her. She was able to sign in and find her TA in 47 seconds. She also correctly perceived and interpreted her place in the waitlist. During the test, Student 2 was staring at the computer screen very closely.

Student 2 was able to find her TA on the very first try. As to her opinion of whether the system was helpful or not in finding her TA, she was neutral (5/9, 9 = very helpful). In estimating the time it would take for her to be helped, she felt the system was slightly helpful (6/9, 9 = very helpful). She did feel that the program was extremely easy to use (9/9, 9 = very easy). Student 2 had a neutral opinion as to how useful the program was (5/9 scale with 9 = very useful). Student 2 thought the system was cool, but maybe not necessary. One suggestion for improvement was to add information to the office hour room monitor. Next to each student, the system could display what that student wants to talk to the TA about (debugging help, quick questions, re-grade request, etc.) This would help students better estimate how long they will have to wait before being helped. Also if waiting students know what the TA is helping the current student with and they have the same problem, they can listen in and both people can be helped simultaneously.

Student 3 is a math major who is taking a computer science class. She goes to office hours once in a while. She sometimes has trouble finding her TA (6/9, 9 = often). If she cannot find her TA she will shout out for her TA until she finds the person. On average she usually has to wait 5-10 minutes for a TA. She has never been on a waitlist before. Student 3 feels slightly comfortable with computer (6/9, 9 = very comfortable). She uses a computer 5-20 hours each week. She has used a touch-screen before.

Student 3 completed the tasks without any problems. She was able to sign in and locate her TA in 46 seconds. She correctly comprehended her place in the waitlist.

Student 3 thought the system helped a lot in finding her TA (rating of 9 on 1-9 scale with 9 being a lot). She did not think the system was very helpful in estimating the time it would take for her to be helped (3/9, 9 = very helpful). She thought the program was very easy to use (9/9, 9 = easy). She also thought the program was very useful (9/9, 9 = very useful). After signing in, Student 3 thought that the output “Your number is 6” was confusing until she read the next line where it says, “There are 5 people ahead of you”. She also preferred a nicer color scheme for the office hour status monitor program.

Student 4 is an art major who has taken a computer science class before. He has never gone to office hours for help. He feels very comfortable with computers (8/9, 9 = very comfortable). He uses a computer more than 40 hours a week. He has used a touch screen before.

Student 4 did not have any trouble completing the tasks. He took 30 seconds to sign in and find his TA.

Student 4 thought that the system was very helpful in locating his TA (9/9, 9 = very helpful). He thought that the system was not helpful at all in estimating the time he would have to wait to be helped (1/9, 9 = very helpful). Student 4 thought the program was very easy to use (9/9, 9 = easy). He also thought the program was somewhat useful (7/9, 9 = very useful). One improvement he suggested was adding the estimated time it would take to be helped to the system. This suggestion is not really feasible since estimated wait time is so variable due to many conditions.

Student 5 is a computer science major who goes to office hours once in awhile. She almost never has trouble finding her TA when she goes to office hours (2/9, 9 = often having trouble). If she went into the office hour room and did not know who her TA was, she is not sure she would ask around until she found them (4/9, 9 = very sure). She usually spends an average of less than 5 minutes waiting to get help from her TA. She has had to wait on a waitlist before, and she thinks they are slightly helpful in estimating the time she has to wait (6/9, 9 = very helpful). She feels moderately comfortable with computers (5/9, 9 = very comfortable). She spends more than 40 hours a week using a computer. She has used a touch screen before.

Student 5 took 2 minutes and 15 seconds to sign in and find her TA. Because the situation may not have been explained well to her, Student 5 had a little trouble finding her TA. She did not understand that the piece of paper with the six pictures was supposed to represent the TA’s sitting in the office hour room. After more explanation, she was able to correctly find her TA and interpret her place on the waitlist.

Student 5 thought this program was able to help her find her TA somewhat (7/9, 9 = helping a lot). She thought the office hour monitor was pretty helpful in estimating the time it would take for her to be helped by her TA (8/9, 9 = very helpful). She thought this program was somewhat easy to use (7/9, 9 = easy). She thought this program is slightly useful (6/9, 9 = very useful). Student 5 had some suggested improvements. For the Student Sign In, she suggested having some kind of description on the first sign in screen for users who have never used the program before, to let them know what they are signing in to. For the Office Hour Monitor, when there are multiple TA’s in office hours for one class, she suggested listing all the names of the TA’s and highlighting the name of the TA when their picture comes up, or displaying all the TA’s at the same time, instead of flashing their information.

3.3 Teaching Assistant Usability Test

3.3.1 TA Tasks

1. Sign in. Your login is deta and passcode is iamta.

2. Sign-In to table 4.

3. You have just helped the first student on the waitlist. Remove this student from the list.

4. Find out the name of the next student waiting to be helped. Take a look at this student’s grades.

5. How much time left for the end of the office hour?

6. LogOff.

3.3.2 TA-Part Usability Test Results

This part of the project has been tested with three subjects. Two of these subjects were computer science major and the third one was not.

Student 1 was an astronomy major who uses computer often (25 hours/week), though he never uses computers during his office hours. He never used a waitlist for his office hours before. Thus, he is unfamiliar with the waitlist approach, while computer science majors use them frequently in their lives in one way or another. He also thinks that his office hours are not too crowded, therefore eliminating a need for a waitlist.

Student 1 failed to remove a student from the list task. He thought that the program did not respond to it, although he saw that there is a check in front of the student that was removed. He also thought that checking should only be used for selecting the student. In our program, selecting is being done by shading the item in the list.

Although he was not a computer science major, he was a frequent computer user, as mentioned above. Like most computer users, he had his own style. He mainly used keyboard, minimizing the use of mouse. During our test, in most of the places, he used the tab button to change the active section of a menu. Unfortunately, our program was not refined for such usage. It is going to be one of our refinement issues in the future.

He thought that it is generally hard to use the program. (4/10)

Student 2 was a computer science major and as expected he was a frequent computer user. For a waitlist, he uses paper sheets during his office hours.

He thought highly of the idea of such a program and he is positive that such a program will be useful in office hours. He generally found it easy to use the program.

He was able to complete his tasks successfully, even though he had some confusion about removing a student from a list. He also thought that the time features could be improved.

Student 3 was also a computer science major and a very frequent computer user. He used paper waitlists in office hours if it was very crowded. He thought that the program is very useful but hard to use.

He had confusion about two things. One problem was in removing a student, just like the other subjects. The other was for the session information, he could not figure out how to enter information. When he tried to sign-in, he always came across an error message indicating that the information was not complete. TA information on that page is on the left bottom corner, and this confusion may have occurred because of this. A better placement of the menu parts will be done in our next refinement step.

The selection of a table is done by clicking on the desired table, but the subject could not figure out how to change his table. We are planning to add some hints to the active screen, so that users can understand the actions they have to do for different tasks.

In addition to these, all of the subjects thought that it is very useful to see the grades of the student who is being helped at the time. Two of them thought that more descriptive headings/labels should be selected to refine usability.

As a very interesting note, although we have Help button on all the menus, none of the subjects tried to use it. They all had some problems in finding the actions they had to perform, and they asked the observer for help. Although the observer did help them, they did not try the Help button and see the manual. They tried to find the answers by themselves.

3.4 Usability Tests Summary

Overall, student users found this program to be somewhat useful and helpful in finding their TAs, and it was easy to use for them. Our test users were also very helpful in giving feedback about what was positive about our system, and areas that they felt needed improvement. We were able to use some of their suggestions in improving our design.

4. Conclusions

The current design of the TA-Online system seems to be effective in improving the efficiency of office hours in the Office Hour Room at A.V. Williams for lower level classes. It helps the organization and communication of students and Teaching Assistants. In its current development state, the TA-Online system is still a prototype. We have only implemented the user interface of the system. The back end functionality of the system still needs to be implemented.

A feature that can be added to the Student Sign-In application is the ability to show multiple TA's for each class, in the case that more than one TA is available for a class. Another feature related to multiple TA's is for the student to be able to choose which TA they want to get help from, if they have a preference. A feature that would provide more convenience and error prevention would be to only show the class(es) the student is currently taking, when the student signs into the system and chooses their class. Perhaps in the future, more classes could also be added to this system.

There are some features that can improve the Office Hour Room Status Monitor. One feature that would be useful to add to our system is a web page where Students could access information on the current status of Office Hours. Students would be able to visit the site and the site would contain almost all of the information present in the Office Hour Room monitor. In such a scenario, students would be able to see how busy office hours are and monitor the current waitlist size for their class. If the student is already on a waitlist but has left the office hour room, they can view the web page to see their current position in line. Another feature that would be beneficial is having a mechanism for the monitor to display what exactly students are going to get help with. In this way, students having similar problems can listen in, or a student can better estimate their wait time by knowing what people in front of them on the waitlist will be getting help with. Another helpful feature would be to display the table or computer the TA's are sitting at, along with their picture, along with a layout of the room showing where each computer and table is.

There are some useful features that can be added to TA part as well. Currently, the TA can see the grades of a student, but cannot edit them. In the future, this functionality can be added so that the TA will not have to access to another database to change the grade of a student, which is a very common thing in office hours. It would also be useful to give a graphical representation of a student's grade information. This will make the TA understand the level of the student easily. Another addition could be allowing the "Change Info" button to let the TA change tables or computers as well as personal information. It might also be helpful to be able to move a student to the end of the waitlist, in case a student has missed their turn.

Future developers who work on our project should do further research into the effectiveness of our system. Also, the projected cost of our system should be considered.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all our friends who graciously consented to help us test the usability of our system. We would also like to thank Professor Shneiderman for encouraging us and being patient with us.

References

· The Maryland MVA Motor Vehicle Administration Web Site, http://mva.state.md.us/