In the absence of industry standards, many small- and medium-sized companies struggle to assess the security risks of cloud adoption. Additionally, the quality and intended audience of available resources is typically focused on singular topics, or otherwise not suitable for companies to consume. To address these issues we published a website to serve as a reference for common concerns and a resource collection for various authorities regarding cloud computing security concerns. The website is published alongside a formal document outlining our findings on GitHub to make them open source, allowing their content to be changed and updated as necessary in the future.

Research scientists need to stay up-to-date on advancements in their field, but it is time-consuming to constantly search multiple sources. They need to collaborate with other people with complementary expertise, but discovering them can be a challenge. Scientists also need to become aware of funding opportunities they should apply to, but are not sure which ones are appropriate. Connected to Research delivers relevant publications, key people, and funding opportunities. This personalized portal knows your interests so it eliminates searching, reduces the effort, lowers barriers, and automatically provides the information you need when you need it. It tracks key dates and notifies you of changes. Connected to Research allows you to collaborate and share information with others in your team. This tool also actively monitors a variety of trusted sources so you do not have to. Your time is valuable so now you can stay Connected to Research.

Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI) offers two sustainable MBA programs that encourage hands-on practical learning to anchor classroom lecture and discussion. As part of their coursework, students are encouraged to dig deeper into topics as well as conduct research using library resources such as the Resource Database. However, this resource can be difficult to navigate, especially when students are unsure about which resources to use on a project. It becomes even more confusing if interdisciplinary elements are present. The library desires to present available resources in a way that students can quickly access information relevant to the specific courses. The solution is to create research guides that not only present top quality resources useful for class assignments but also introduces students to resources that can used as they move forward in their careers.

According to the University of Washington Undergraduate Advising Office, “Many students are undecided about their majors when they enter college — and many who think they have decided will change their minds more than once before they graduate.” However, changing majors is costly. Students that change majors often end up taking longer than expected to graduate. This means that students must absorb additional tuition and living costs. During the 2013-2014 academic year, the average full-time student paid up to $31,971 in tuition alone. CourseConnect is a proof-of-concept web tool built to help students easily learn about majors they might be interested in, based on their course history and/or academic plan. By using data about courses previous students have taken and the degree they obtained, CourseConnect aims to reduce the risk and costs associated with changing majors by helping students make informed choices when they declare or change majors.

Online streaming services such as Twitch.tv allow anyone with a computer to share their gaming experiences with other people who share their passion for video gaming, while making a profit sharing what they do with others. Inspired by popular streaming platforms like Twitch and StageIt (another streaming service for the performing arts), as well as cooking communities like the Food Network, Crumble plans to develop a unique experience for users with an environment specifically tailored for live streaming cooking shows. As a multi-functional, live streaming platform, streamers will have the ability to broadcast at a low budget with a service that offers tools to schedule broadcasts, discover commercial opportunities, and effectively share information with viewers in a cooking context. Viewers will have easy access to cooking education and real-time interaction with streamers. Crumble revolutionizes how users invite the world into their kitchen.

The UW Department of Global Health website provides information to a diverse audience that includes students, researchers and global health professionals. However, the site is not easy to navigate, and the department desires to improve usability as well as increase visibility of their academic programs. Our research examined three areas: the goals of the department staff, website statistics, and student-user needs.  Website analytics and a content inventory of the current site were evaluated.  Usability testing was performed with students through surveys, user observation, and in-depth interviews allowing us to understand their search behavior and information needs.   The quantitative and qualitative data collected was used to create a prototype taxonomy for website navigation and a suggested redesign of the homepage. Recommendations to improve the website, and address the needs of prospective and current students, were presented to the Department of Global Health for incorporation into their website redesign project this summer.

There are currently few ways for students to explicitly showcase the skills they learn outside of school to advance them in their career and education. At the Pacific Science Center, youth in the Discovery Corps program become leaders in science and presentation, developing crucial personal and professional skills that that they would not have otherwise developed in school. Our solution to giving the students the recognition they deserve is to design a digital badge system for the Discovery Corps Program. Digital badges provide the youth with a way to present these skills in an online platform that they can share with potential employers and educators. This creates a precedent for which skills learned outside of school can be quantified in an applicable manner. Students can gain recognition for skills that previously were unacknowledged, giving them an advantage in reaching future goals.

This project addresses the lack of well tested, comprehensive, and statically-typed data structures and algorithms for TypeScript and JavaScript. In JavaScript the only data structures provided are arrays, and string key hash maps. This limits the ability of JavaScript developers to solve problems; where other data structures would work better with less code and more efficiency. Having a comprehensive library of well-researched data structures and algorithms will increase the productivity of JavaScript and TypeScript developers. Success was gauged by documentation for public APIs, extensive test coverage, and published public modules containing the completed library. Surveys were also conducted on various online development communities in order to determine the utility and quality of the library.

In 2012, an estimated 421,000 people were injured from crashes involving distracted drivers. This is a 9% increase from the previous year. Locking drivers out of their phone is not a way to combat this issue. Instead, we have developed an Android lockscreen application that allows users to set commonly used driving apps so that they have quick access to them when needed, as well as provide data via the phones’ sensors to show how safely the users drive. Our app not only reduces time spent fumbling through the phone to find specific apps, but it also tells the user they might be an often-distracted driver. We found that through the use of our lockscreen replacement, testers spent up to 13 less seconds browsing to an app they wanted to use, indicating that our app would help drivers pay more attention to the road.

Reed College is in the early phases of a joint library-IT project to improve undergraduate research skills, especially for sophomores and juniors. Numerous studies have focused on the first-year experience, but none have explicitly looked at how sophomores and juniors make the transition to conducting course-related research independently. This project serves as a needs assessment for the broader initiative. We gathered information by conducting and analyzing faculty and student focus groups and also implemented a student survey. Our findings indicate that while most students understand the importance of quality resources, they often struggle to understand faculty expectations and to integrate all the facets of the research process into a unified whole. Based on these findings, we make several recommendations: earlier introduction to research methods, projects broken into manageable parts with clear expectations, better promotion of available services and technologies, and integrated classroom training and introduction to discipline-based research practices.