CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The advancement in technologies and the
fast pace globalization has led to university students eitherpartially or fully
in an online environment (LaPointe&Reisetter, 2008). Onlinelearning
presents not only challenges in course design but also opportunities toenhance
student learning. The value of online learning communities is supportedby powerful
learning theories; an active learning community and a sense ofconnectedness to
others are critical to real learning (LaPointe&Reisetter, 2008).
The
recent growth in computer networks and more specifically, the World Wide Web
(WWW) has given rise to communication, socialization and interaction between
individuals via the internet. The internet
is been used for several purposes these days ranging from education,
business and so on, one major area that focuses on individual interaction and
communication is online forum.
An
online forum, or message board, is an online discussion
site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages
are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a
user and/or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a
moderator before it becomes visible.
Since
information and privacy is very vital as it involves some secrets, strategies
or ideas, there has been need to protect information from being violated or
exposed. This introduces us to the need for a secured online forum, Luke et al.
(2003) defines Security as the
degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and criminal activity.
Security as a form of protection structures and processes that provide or
improve security as a condition, here security mechanisms, policies and
privileges can be enforced. With this, private posts can be enhanced and
regulations can be applied. In other words will we design a secure student online
forum.
This
present era has been termed to be an information age, an age where the demand
for information has dramatically increase, the internet has been the most
useful place for getting information nowadays, the use of search engines is one
of the most useful, the internet is not just used for getting information but
for also socializing and exchanging ideas and information, this has led to the
development of several softwares and applications, ranging from the development
of online communities and interactive applications. Some of these communities
and interactive applications are included with live chat, instant messaging,
forum and online calls. Information are surfed at every possible place, people
are interested in sharing and obtaining feedback on their research or who are interested in studying
online communities of practice. In a case of a learning community, there are
ways in which the community can leverage learning; one of such way is online
forum which is our area of focus.
Sylvia
c. (2007) explains, an online forum is a type of interactive website for
holding discussions and posting user generated content, usually each
conversation has its own screen, with the original posting at the top, and
responses listed in chronological order below. A sense of virtual community
often develops around forums that have regular users, it is an instance of
interactive web. Forums differ from chat rooms and instant messaging because
forum participants do not have to be online at the same time, they suit short
posts, which request a response from others. This online forum can enhance
campus-based activities; opportunities to support existing campus-based
activities will be explored. For example faculty learning communities and
workshop that are supported through the learning could be supported and
promoted through the forum, exchange of expertise and services with other
forums.
Luke
et al. (2003) explains, one good way to get users to return to your site is to
offer Web forum, these can be used for purposes as varied as philosophical
discussion groups and product technical support. Web forums are sometimes also
called discussion board or threaded discussion groups, the idea of a forum is
that people can post articles or question to them and others can read and reply
to their questions. Each topic in a forum is usually called thread.
Over
the years number of reported security breaches has increased, intrusions and
attack have become more and more sophisticated and are very common nowadays,
since information and privacy is very vital as it involves some secrets,
strategies or ideas, there has been need to protect information from being
violated or exposed. This introduces us to the need for a secured online forum,
where security mechanisms, policies and privileges can be enforced. With this,
private posts can be enhanced and regulations can be applied. However in online
forum information and ideas can be shared, individuals who share in an interest
in education research and practice can dialogue across disciplines,
geographical borders, levels of expertise, and educational sectors. In other
words new threads of discussion by posting articles can be started, viewing
articles that have been posted, viewing the threads of conversation in the
forum.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
In recent time the quest for this
knowledge has risen drastically, surfing or browsing the web without direction
for information is becoming stressful especially using search engines. Also
getting information in a campus-based community, especially when carrying out
research, it can be stressful and expensive.
Due
to busy schedules of lecturers, they find it difficult passing information to
students, students in turn also find it difficult to interact with them,
especially to ask question and get ideas.
Setting up a forum is actually quite
an interesting problem. We will need some way of storing the articles in a
database with author, title, date, and content information. However, the way
most threaded discussion software works is that, along with showing you the
available articles, it will show you the relationship between articles. That
is, you are able to see which articles are replies to other articles (and which
article they are following up) and which articles are new topics of discussion.
1.3
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The
project is aimed at designing a social community website for lecturers and
students interaction in the Department of Computer Science and computer
engineering. The functionalities are related to normal existing social
websites, this entails; quick messaging (student-to-student,
student-to-lecturer and lecturer-to-lecturer)
i.
To protect information from
unauthorized users by implementing
role
based security.
ii.
To implement a secured web forum for
students and lecturers of the Department Of Computer Science, University of
Port Harcourt
1.4
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This research work will help in
enhancing our knowledge about implementing an online forum; it will improve the
interaction between lecturers and students.
This
forum is developed in order to facilitate it users to establish network between
one to many persons and maintain all people’s profile. It will also help to
save time and energy when they want to share some kind of information, views,
ideas etc to their group friends without spending so much time for
communicating to each other. It provides social communism so that people can
interact with each other even both of them so far away from each other.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This project is centered on building
a student online forum using PHP and SQL technology; it is going to elaborate
on how security checks can be enforced to an online forum. We will give the
general view of online forum, security and related research especially in area
like online community and interactive web. Also basic security techniques used
in interactive webs and forum.
1.6
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
An interesting area like this is
quite tasking, getting the required technical skill to develop this research is
a great limitation. Surfing and searching for material and information online
is expensive which makes it a major constrain and limitation in this work.
Another constrain is time, due to short time frame some areas relating to this research were not covered.
1.7
DEFINITION OF TERMS
Online community: it is a virtual
community that exists online whose members enables its existence through taking
part in membership ritual. Many means are used in social software separately or
in combination, including text-based chat rooms and forums that use voice,
video text or avatars
Online forum: it is an online
discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted
messages
Security:
It is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and criminal
activity. Security as a form of protection is structures and processes that provide or improve security as a
condition.
Information:It
is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system
Message
board: It is an online discussion site where people can
hold conversations in the form of posted messages
Database:It
is a system intended to organize, store, and retrieve large amounts of data
easily
Query:
A specific set of instructions for extracting a particular data or information
Repository:It
is a location where large number of information or data are kept or stored.
Thread:(sometimes
called a topic) is a collection of posts, usually displayed from oldest
to latest.