At Northeastern University cooperative-education is an integral part of the education experience. There is a continuous need to supervise hundreds of students searching through thousands of jobs each and every school quarter. We present the analysis, design, and prototype implementation of a modern computerized Web-based Cooperative Education Database System that connects employers, students and faculty. Employers post and maintain their up to date job offerings. Students search for these jobs and maintain their own personal job selections and information. All of this interaction is supervised and coordinated by the Co-op faculty. The work was done on a small-scale Co-op database in the College of Computer Science. A working model of the system was created as part of a practical training course. The project included a detailed requirement analysis and specifications for the system, a database schema design and simulations of possible usage scenarios of the data flow, and the implementation of the model database and its main graphical user interface with Microsoft Access. A partial web interface for students was also implemented with Active Server Pages on IIS web server. In comparison to the university Co-op database system currently in use, the prototyped system is much more flexible, easier to extend, and most importantly, user and web friendly. Since this project was begun, Northeastern University has decided to implement a Web-based commercial Co-op database product which includes many feature similar to those in this project.
 

International Conference on Practice Oriented Education, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, April 25-27, 2001.