Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

In the fall of 2025 , I was presented with the exciting opportunity to teach CS 433/533: Web Security at Old Dominion University (ODU) . This course was designed and previously taught by Dr. Michael L. Nelson . Having experienced this class firsthand as a student, I was thrilled to transition into the role of an instructor, bringing my unique perspective to the curriculum. Through this blog, I aim to share my journey and insights from teaching this course, with the hope that my experiences will serve as a useful resource for fellow colleagues and those venturing into teaching for the first time.  The goal of this course was to review common web security vulnerabilities and exploits, along with the defenses designed to counter them. Students explored topics such as browser security models, web application vulnerabilities, and various attack and defense mechanisms including injection, denial-of-service , cross-site scripting , and more. Alongside theoretical knowledge, students also...

  https://xkcd.com/2237/ Eight courses from the Web Science and Digital Libraries ( WS-DL ) Group will be offered for Fall 2025.  The classes will be a mixture of on-line, f2f, and hybrid.  C S 418/518 Web Programming, Ms.  Nasreen Muhammad Arif , Tuesdays & Thursdays 3-4:15  Topics : MySQL, React, Express.js, NodeJS, MVC (Model-View-Control), Search Engines, GitHub   C S 432/532 Web Science,  Ms.  Nasreen Muhammad Arif , asynchronous   Topics : Python, R, D3, ML, and IR.   CS 433/533 Web Security, Ms.  Kritika Garg , asynchronous   Topics : HTTP, Cross-Site Request Forgery, Same Origin Policy, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Fingerprinting, Denial-of-service, Phishing.  CS 620 Intro to Data Science & Analytics, Dr.  Sampath Jayarathna , Web, Tuesdays & Thursdays 6-7:15 and asynchronous (8 week session starting in October) Topics : Python, Pandas, NumPy, NoSQL, Data Wrangling, ML, Cola...