This project was created to expose students to the variability in Internet quality as experienced by many around the world: slow, unresponsive, or intermittently lossy. Through this project, students were challenged to think about these issues and how to debug the problems using skills gained in the course. In doing so, students experienced empathy with those whose Internet experience differs from their own. The ultimate goal was for students to understand why online systems need to be designed with such variations of experience in mind.
This course-based undergraduate research project included the redesign of two programming assignments. In the first, the students experienced the impact of specific network issues on everyday activities on the Internet. Multiple simulations were created: bandwidth limitations, increased latencies (delays), latency variations (jitters), and packet drops. Under these simulations, the students browsed through a multimedia-rich webpage that contained video playback, downloading of a large file, live audio, and a live game. In the second assignment, students tweaked the parameters of the end to end transport layer (TCP) to overcome some of the underlying network issues.
After the students completed each assignment, the students were required to reflect on their experience through a chat with an AI-based large language model. The students conversed with an AI chatbot called Socratic Mind (Georgia Tech internal project) which was tailored to this project with a set of questions and expected answers. After these chats with the AI agent, students completed a brief survey. Survey responses reveal that students were largely satisfied with how the AI agent probed the students to think in the right direction.
In a subsequent assignment, the students were required to change some of the parameters to TCP in response to packet loss, delay, and jitter in the underlying network. The students' decisions were evaluated objectively by comparing their outcomes to a network with no such issues.
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