WebWisdom.org is a virtual university offering certificate programs in two areas: High Performance Computing and Internetics (Internet Technologies).
Instruction hours include a mixture of lectures and laboratory. In the distance education version of this the laboratory part is reduced and demonstrations are included. Homework is required and all administration and homework submission is handled through a secure web-linked database. Much homework can be performed on a student's own machine which must have Internet access. Specialized facilities such as Oracle databases, Lotus Notes servers and parallel machines (implemented as clusters of PC's and workstations) are available at NPAC with remote world-wide access for students.
Internetics Certificates
In Internetics, a certificate in Internet Application Development is offered for graduate and professional students. Several levels of the certificate are offered, based on the number of courses included.
All certificates include the following 3 core courses (except that the first may be waived).
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Core Courses |
| 1. Internet Fundamentals for Application Developers (waived for qualified students) non-credit 21 hours of instruction |
| 2. Programming for the Web (credit for Syracuse University CPS 606) 39 hours of instruction |
| 3. Web Technologies and Software (credit for Syracuse University CPS 616) 39 hours of instruction |
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Optional Courses |
| 4. Networking and Multimedia Technologies (credit for Syracuse University CPS 640) 39 hours of instruction |
| 5. Advanced Web Projects (credit for Syracuse University CPS 714 Case Studies for Information Applications) 39 hours of instruction |
| 6. Authoring and Designing for Multimedia Web Information Systems (credit for Syracuse University CPS 600) 36 hours of instruction |
High Performance Computing and Computational Science Certificates
In high performance computing, a certificate is offered based of these two courses:| 7. Computational Science for Simulation Applications (credit for Syracuse University CPS 615) |
| 8. Case Studies in Simulation Applications (credit for Syracuse University CPS 713) | /tr>
Details of Certificate Courses
This first course introduces strategies for developing Internet applications to solve distributed computing problems in business and industry. The student learns the fundamentals of the UNIX operating system while accessing basic Internet services such as e-mail, telnet, and ftp. Concepts in client/server technology are illustrated within the context of the World Wide Web. As a project, the student writes and installs a home page on a WWW server.
This programming course covers basic programming languages and skills provide a basis for the further study of Web software applications. Students learn Web architecture and Web interfacing mechanisms through the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). The main part of the course concentrates on the use of the Java programming language for web user interfaces and for distributed computing.
This course surveys several software technologies of current interest for use with integrated systems in collaboration, databases, and distributed computing. Specific topics in the course evolve rapidly to include leading edge technologies. Currently included are Web interfaces to relational databases, including JDBC and ColdFusion, JavaScript for rapid development of user interfaces, VRML and Java3D for 3D scenes, the use of CORBA to connect distributed applications, and security and electronic commerce technologies.
This course is designed to give sufficient background to enable the Web application programmer to understand functionality and performance issues in the design of a corporate intranet or other distributed system. Topics include advanced networking systems and applications involving multimedia transfer. An example will be the Tango system, a Java/JavaScript-based collaborative system distributed over the Web, and how to write Java applications that run as collaborative "plug-ins" to this system. Short projects will extend the more basic examples covered in the previous course to demonstrate the concepts.
Three applications in the information area are studied in detail and the students' work is one large project. Applications are chosen from diverse areas such as Geographical Information Systems, Video Servers, Parallel Databases, and Web based computing. This course will also include presentations of emerging trends in software architecture of the web and the use of web technologies in commerce. The contents of the course will vary according to the latest developments of the Web.
This course will cover advanced techniques for displaying and navigating multimedia information on the Web. For textual information, it will cover HTML and its evolution to dynamic HTML and XML, and the linkage of PC tools to the web. Graphics and design for images and video will be covered. The use of collaborative tools will be explored. Applications to education curricula development and management will be featured.
This course covers the modeling of scientific and engineering problems and computational methods, possibly parallel, applied to those problems. Topics may include matrix methods, numerical methods for ordinary and partial differential equations, random numbers, and optimization techniques.
Typically, three applications in science and engineering are studied in some detail and the students' work is one large project. Application areas have included statistical analysis of experimental data, CFD Navier-Stokes equations using finite differences, simulating black holes using finite elements, and the Ising model using Monte Carlo techniques.