CISC 498
Information Technology Project

1) Project title: Inclusive Exercise Program Builder – Revved Up

Customers involved in the project: Amanda Cunningham, School of Kinesiology and Health Studies- Revved Up, dipa.coordinator@queensu.ca

Project short description: Create a platform which houses a bank of exercises (photos, descriptions, video?) appropriate for individuals with disabilities (mobility impairment, intellectual disability). Create a tool for which Revved Up exercise professionals can generate programs through the platform. Create a final program output tool that is automated, accessible and engaging that would allow distribution of the program.

2) Program Title: Timetable Planning Tool

Customer: Michael C. Reyes (he/il/él), PhD, Associate Professor, Department Head, Department of French Studies, Email: mcr6@queensu.ca  | www.queensu.ca/french/people-search/michael-reyes

Proposal: Each year in the Winter term department heads must plan which courses will be offered to allow students to move through their degrees and which faculty members will teach these courses. However, there is currently no timetable tool that department heads can use to keep track of which courses are being offered, by whom, and what term. I currently use a blank excel that I fill with color coded cells, and that I constantly double check for errors.

While simple on its face, putting together a timetable involves several complex considerations.

• We can imagine an instructor (object or something else) which knows static information: an instructor's name, workload (how many courses they typically teach a year), specific or general rights over certain courses for term adjuncts, and dynamic information: like administrative or academic leave and any other information that impact their effective teaching load and what courses you intend to teach them in the Fall and winter, and a running history of courses that have previously taught and when.
• Similarly, a Course object might know static information like its title, and dynamic information like if it has multiple sections in a given year, who is teaching those sections, and who has previously taught it.
• When planning, the timetable tool itself would keep track of the remaining courses to be assigned for each instructor as you assign them (visually would be nice), what courses still need to be assigned from a slate of courses, and other metrics.
• It would need a robust initial input system for each instructor and course, as well as a way of modifying instructors for a given year based on retirements, leaves, and upgrading term adjuncts from term, to Specific Right of Reappointment, General Right of Reappointment, Continuing, etc.
• A visual overview of Fall and Winter terms as you're building them, would be really nice as well.
• More advanced versions might include analysis of instructor course assignment and course assignment histories during a first draft check ("Alert: You have not assigned Prof. X any option courses this year. You also did not assign them any option courses last year.")

Such a tool would be immensely helpful in putting together a timetable.

3) Title: Development of a Smartwatch App for Automated Research Participant Consent and Collection of Exercise Metrics 

Customer: Jessica Selinger, Associate Professor, School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Principal Investigator of the Queen’s Neuromechanics Lab,  j.selinger@queensu.ca 

The Queen’s Neuromechanics Lab investigates human locomotion, from biomechanics to behaviour. While many of our walking and running studies are conducted in the lab, we are increasingly exploring movement in real-world settings, using wearable fitness tracking devices to capture more ecologically valid data. We currently have 40 Apple Watch Ultra 2s for research use, provided as in-kind support through the Apple Investigator Support Program. We would like a simple iOS application (likely created through Apple’s Research Kit/Health Kit) that will: i) allow for study information and electronic participant consent to occur on the phone/watch; ii) allow the participant to control when data is logged/contributed to the study (i.e. start and stop data collection during bouts of exercise) and to tag the logged activity with some context (i.e. state what they were doing, where they were, how they felt); iii) save exercise related metrics during these logged activities to a secure database, including timeseries of: GPS (latitude and longitude), speed (m/s), cumulative distance (m), step rate (steps per minute), terrain slope (%), heart rate (beats per minute), and energy estimate (W/kg); iv) provide a brief activity summary and thank you message to the participant after logging.

4) Project Title: Instrument Reservation and Usage Analytics Software for the Mass Spectrometry Facility

Customer: Mario Khalil, Mass Spectrometry Facility Manager, Department of Chemistry, Queen’s University, [mario.khalil@queensu.ca ]   

Short Description:
The Mass Spectrometry Facility in the Department of Chemistry requires a custom-built software solution to manage instrument reservations and generate usage analytics. This tool will replace a costly commercial product (QReserve) and offer improved features compared to our current basic scheduling system.

Key capabilities include:

• Calendar-based instrument booking with role-based user permissions.
• Secure login (Queen’s credentials or local authentication).
• Data import from CSV/Excel for historical usage.
• Automated logging of sessions and usage data.
• Analytics dashboard with visual trends, peak usage times, and exportable reports.
• Administrative settings for instruments, booking rules, and notifications.

This project will give students hands-on experience in requirements gathering, interface design, database architecture, and analytics implementation, while delivering a valuable, real-world solution for our facility.

5) Project title: Transcription Software for Oral History Recordings

Customers involved in the project: Hannah McElgunn, LLCU, hannah.mcelgunn@queensu.ca

Project short description: I am currently collaborating on two projects that involve the transcription of oral histories.  One project is with Algonquin Park and the other is with the Hopi Tribe, an Indigenous community in Arizona. Actual human transcription (rather than speech-to-text) is an important part of both projects. Across both collaborations, I am encountering the same issue: finding streamlined transcription software that allows non-experts to accurately transcribe historical recordings. Some transcription programs are too powerful, involving too many features that users (some of whom are elders with limited computer literacy) find tricky and off-putting. On the other hand, some programs are too minimal, requiring extensive formatting and editing. 

An ideal transcription program would be freely available to the two communities mentioned above and able to accommodate the following functionalities: slow down, speed up, pause, play, and rewind audio; inclusion of metadata fields like speaker, transcriber, language, and summary; automatic timestamping; export to pdf, Word doc, or txt;  an appended "notes" section on each transcription for transcribers to write up any issues; the ability to italicize, bold, capitalize, and highlight text. As a bonus, being able to use transcription pedals with this software would also be great.

6) Project title: Designing a versatile GUI for SPEMCFEM, an Open-Source Geoscientific Multiphysics Platform

Customers involved in the project:

Hom Nath Gharti, PhD Assistant Professor Digital Earth Science and Engineering Lab (DESEL) https://www.digitalearthscience.com/  
Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering, Queens University homnath.gharti@queensu.ca  

Project short description: 

SPECFEM (https://specfem.org/)  is one of the most widely used open-source software packages in geoscience. It is a cross-platform, command-driven code designed to run efficiently on systems ranging from small-scale computers to large CPU and GPU clusters. Despite its broad adoption in exploration and global seismology, engineering, solid and fluid mechanics, and even medical imaging, many users face challenges due to the absence of a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI).

This project proposes the development of a versatile GUI for SPECFEM, preferably implemented in C++/Qt or Python/Qt, to broaden accessibility and facilitate use across multiple disciplines.

Key points:

- The client is one of the leading developers of SPECFEM.

- The client will provide explanations and demonstrations of the software’s main components and workflow.

- SPECFEM is fully open source and currently hosted on GitHub.

- The project stems from a long-standing international collaboration, offering students opportunities for global engagement.

- The resulting GUI must be open source and hosted on GitHub or GitLab.

- The project is ambitious, and its outcome has the potential to become a high-impact software contribution, suitable for presentation at international conferences and publication in peer-reviewed journals such as Computers & Geosciences or the Journal of Open Source Software.

- For more information, please feel free to contact me

7) Project title: A Database for Dog-Human Interaction Research

 Customers involved in the project: Dr. Valerie Kuhlmeier, Primary Investigator of The Social Cognition Lab, Department of Psychology, Email: vk4@queensu.ca

 Project short description: The Social Cognition Lab studies the various ways that humans and other species learn, remember, and interact. We currently have a growing research program studying dog cognition: hundreds of dog owners from the local community visit the lab and engage in pet-friendly test sessions. We require a database to keep track of participant (dog and human) information, appointment scheduling, and appointment history. Requirements of the database include:

4. This database will be accessed by many members of the research team, so should be intuitive and user-friendly 
5. Contact information and survey results will be stored, so the database should be compliant with privacy laws
6. The database should be able to generate basic reports regarding scheduling and participant demographics
7. The database should be compatible with existing University servers

8) Developing an app to track individual carbon emissions in real time

Customers involved in the project: Warren Mabee, Policy Studies/Geography and Planning, Queen’s University.

Project short description: The carbon footprint of individual Canadians has become a priority as reducing emissions is a key component of fighting climate change. Most carbon ‘trackers’ are simply calculators, where you input a few basic lines (what kind of house you live in, how often you drive/fly, type of diet) and a number is generated. This results in a general benchmark which is not conducive to providing feedback and helping individuals address carbon emissions.

Objectives:

1. Investigate, identify and implement software solutions that can track personal spending via either (a) financial institutions and/or (b) loyalty programs
2. Identify or develop tools to interpret financial data using filters that can identify specific types of spending (e.g., mobility might include spending on transit or fuel; food might include meat and non-meat purchases; etc.)
3. Link filtered financial data to libraries developed by the customer that assign a footprint to different activities, and upload calculated footprints to a central ledger
4. Develop an application interface that presents footprint data to the users through a ledger query

9) Gamification of Lexicographical Engagement

Customers involved in the project: John Chew, Editor-in-Chief, Canadian English Dictionary; Anastasia Riehl

Project short description: It has been two decades since the last general dictionary of Canadian English was published, and Canadians are in urgent need of a reference that defines English the way it is used in our country today. The Canadian English Dictionary is a digital project being developed to meet this demand by a nationwide nonprofit consortium represented locally by the Strathy Language Unit at Queen’s University.

Promoting user engagement is key to the success of the project, to build a sense of community to maintain interest in the project, but equally importantly to solicit contributions of variant pronunciations, newly emerging words, meanings and nuances. A previous group of students proposed adding a gamification layer to the basic lexicographical reference functionality, suggesting that a system similar to Google Maps Local Guides would be suitable.

This project therefore is to design and implement a system for encouraging online dictionary users to engage voluntarily in tasks of use to the project, in exchange for rewards such as in-game currency and recognition.