Explicit Registration Not Required

To use other chat applications, one has to create an account, but in case of our methodology a student

automatically gets registered at the time of his enrollment in the university. For example, in VUP, a student of

BSCS is issued ‘BS1001233’ as a registration number at the time of admission. This ID will also be used to

get login into our application. Our methodology authenticates the user by interacting with the university

database. Therefore, a separate registration is not required for our application.

• Security

Only a university student who has been issued a registration number can use or ELT-MCGID. So, our

methodology is very secure comparatively to other chat applications where any person can create an ID to use

the application.

• Display of Teacher Name

When we do text chat via MSN or Yahoo messenger, it is very difficult to distinguish between teacher and

student. To eliminate this problem, our methodology displays the word ‘teacher’ as a prefix of the teacher’s

reply as well as teacher’s name is displayed the menu bar of the window of each student and his name is also

highlighted in list of class participants. This feature removes ambiguity to identify the teacher.

• Reusability

Our methodology provides an interface to integrate it with the university database. This feature has made our

methodology a reusable component. It enables our system to validate students’ identity, populate teacher and

students’ ‘Virtual Class Rooms’ by connecting with the university database.

• Student Interface

Using this interface a student can attend the VC. Initially all components of this interface are disabled and a

student can not send text message, draw any thing on the whiteboard or speak. He can just watch or listen to

conversation being conducted between teacher and students. This interface is very similar the teacher’s

interface. Difference between teacher interface and student interface is that in place of pane to control VC on

teacher interface, there is an option to raise and drop hand on student interface. Raising hand is a signal that

the student wants to ask a question. This option is provided by a ‘check box’ control. When first time it is

selected by a student, its state changed to selected and name of the student is appended to the list of

‘Questioners’. When it is clicked second time, the state of this check box changes to unselected and now the

student is excluded from the list of questioners.

• Configuration Interface

It provides a mechanism to integrate our system with the university database. This interface provides six text

fields and one button. Six text fields are for various purposes which are as follows: ‘User Name’ and

‘Password’ text fields require ID and password of university’s database that is going to be integrated with our

system. Database URL text field requires URL (uniform resource locator) of the database. Database URL is

an address of the physical location of the university database. DB driver text field demands database driver

which is used to connect with university database. In next two text fields, labeled as ‘User Authentication

Query’ and ‘Course Selection Query’, administrator writes queries which are embedded in our system to fetch

data from university database for authentication of student/teacher who wants to join the VC and to fetch

registered courses of the student/teacher. ‘Save’ button saves all the provided information and now our system

is integrated with the university database.