Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

In the Spring 2026 semester at Old Dominion University (ODU), I taught CS 450 (Undergrad) / CS 550 (Graduate): Database Concepts . The course was fully online, with synchronous live Zoom sessions held twice a week. The attendance was not mandatory but strongly encouraged. All lectures were recorded and made available for students to access whenever needed. Figure 1: Canvas course page for CS 450/550: Database Concepts Through this blog post, I want to share my experience of teaching a senior-level undergraduate/graduate course for the first time, the behind-the-scenes realities of course preparation through to the end of the course, and how student feedback actively shaped the course as it progressed.  Since the course had been taught previously by other instructors, materials were already available, which made things easier. Rather than building everything from scratch, I started by copying over the existing course structure and then carefully updating it to align with the current...

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...

The ODU Teacher Professional Development Workshop was a 3-day program conducted from August 2 th - August 4 th at the Open Research Lab (OR Lab) of the E&CS Building of ODU. It was funded by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium , and was conducted by Dr. Sampath Jayarathna in collaboration with Dr. Stacie Ringleb and Dr. Robert Ash at ODU. The goal of this workshop was to allow secondary-school teachers in the Hampton roads area to learn a) coding in Python, b) basics of the engineering design process, and c) programming with drones (specifically, DJI Tello ). Teachers from 4 schools in Norfolk ( Academy for Discovery , Blair Middle School , Crossroads School , Lake Taylor School , and Norview High School ), 3 schools in Virginia Beach ( Bayside High School , Landstown High School , and Old Donation School ), and 2 schools in Chesapeake ( Grassfield High Sc...

Mat Kelly taught CS418 - Web Programming at Old Dominion University in Spring 2015. This blog post highlights some teaching methods and technologies used (namely, Docker and GitHub) and how he integrated their usage into the flow of the course.                            For Spring Semester at Old Dominion University I taught CS418 - Web Programming with some updated methods and content. This course has been previously taught by various members of ODU WS-DL ( 2014 , 2013 , 2012 ). The first deviation from previous offerings of the course was to change the subject of the project. Previously, CS418 students were asked to progressively build an online forum like phpBB . Web sites resembling this medium are no longer as common as they once were on the Web, so a refresh was needed to keep the project familiar and relevant. For Spring, I asked studen...