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dc.contributor.advisorRobert C. Miller.en_US
dc.contributor.authorKopylov, Igor, M. Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technologyen_US
dc.contributor.otherMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.en_US
dc.date.accessioned2011-02-23T14:23:00Z
dc.date.available2011-02-23T14:23:00Z
dc.date.copyright2010en_US
dc.date.issued2010en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/61165
dc.descriptionThesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.en_US
dc.descriptionCataloged from PDF version of thesis.en_US
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliographical references (p. 63-64).en_US
dc.description.abstractCourseDiff is a prototype system that periodically samples course websites and notifies users via email when it identifies changes to those sites. The system was developed after conducting a study of 120 web pages from 50 MIT course websites sampled for two months during the spring semester of 2009. The study found that only 18% of changes to the HTML content of course website data are actually important to the content of the page. A closer examination of the corpus identified two major sources of trivial changes. The first is automatically generated content that changes on every visit to the page. The second is formatting and whitespace changes that do not affect the page's textual content. Together, these two sources produce over 99% of the trivial changes. CourseDiff implements an algorithm to filter out these trivial changes from the webpages it samples and a change reporting format for the changes that are identified as important. A small user test on part of the CourseDiff interface indicated that the system could feasibly be used by students to track changes to course websites.en_US
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityby Igor Kopylov.en_US
dc.format.extent64 p.en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherMassachusetts Institute of Technologyen_US
dc.rightsM.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.en_US
dc.rights.urihttp://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582en_US
dc.subjectElectrical Engineering and Computer Science.en_US
dc.titleCourseDiff : a system for identifying and reporting changes to course websitesen_US
dc.title.alternativeCourse Diff : a system for identifying and reporting changes to course websitesen_US
dc.title.alternativeSystem for identifying and reporting changes to course websitesen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.description.degreeM.Eng.en_US
dc.contributor.departmentMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
dc.identifier.oclc698482936en_US


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