Harlan Wallach Associate Director Academic and Research Technologies Northwestern University Rodolfo Vieira Senior Web and Applications Developer, Academic and Research Technologies Northwestern University Northwestern University is in the early stages of exploring migration of its application development to the cloud. This presentation focuses on a recent software application platform development, NUPredicts, and the Northwestern GeoGame, which were developed and deployed from Amazon Web Services cloud platform. NuPredicts is a prediction gaming platform designed to foster student engagement for the One Book One Northwestern 2016 selection, Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise. NUPredicts has been deployed three times, for a Northwestern Big 10 Football Game, the Nate Silver One Book One Northwestern keynote address, and for the November 8 presidential election. NUPredicts will continue to have various other game instances that will occur throughout the year. A faculty committee guides the NUPredicts content and is composed of six members from the departments of economics, computer science, and the business school. The Northwestern GeoGame is a second game built on the same platform and is designed to spur undergraduate knowledge of geography. This version is a daily geography quiz that is hosted by the university’s online newspaper “The Daily Northwestern.” Both of these instances reside on the same gaming platform and comprise a responsive-web-design HTML5 game and stateless platform run on AWS in a serverless architecture. The platform leverages AWS API Gateway and Lambda for all the game logic, service composition, and orchestration; the data persistence layer is handled by DynamoDB, a NoSQL database with high availability; and the real-time component, built via the creative use of the AWS Internet-of-Things managed service that broadcasts live updates to all connected users. https://nupredicts.northwestern.edu

1. December 13, 2016
Harlan Wallach
Associate Director of Media and Design,
Northwestern IT
Rodolfo Vieira
Senior Web and Mobile Developer,
Northwestern IT
Serverless and Stateless
Gaming Applications

2. One Book One Northwestern
NU Predicts

3. One Book One Northwestern
NU Predicts

6. “The answer to one of
these questions is no,
and the answer to the
other one is yes.”
- Nate Silver

7. “The answer to one of
these questions is no,
and the answer to the
other one is yes.”
- Nate Silver

9. The 2016 Election
NU Predicts

10. The 2016 Election
NU Predicts

11. The 2016 Election
NU Predicts

12. Geo Game

13. – Candy Lee, Professor,
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Communications,
Northwestern University
– Austin Chambers,
Student, Northwestern University
– Claude Azurin,
Student, Northwestern University
– Rodolfo Vieira,
Senior Developer and AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Northwestern
University IT Academic and Research Technology
– Kelsey Rydland,
GIS and Data Analyst, Northwestern University Libraries
– Alessandro Febretti,
Senior Interactive Visualization Specialist, Northwestern University
Research Computing Services
– Nick Gertonson,
Web and Mobile Designer, Northwestern University, Northwestern
University IT Academic and Research Technology
– Chris Widman,
Production Manager, The Daily Northwestern
-Harlan Wallach
Associate Director, Northwestern Information Technology
Northwestern University
Organizational support provided by:
– Buffett Institute
– Study Abroad Office
– Office of the Provost
– University Libraries

14. The Geo Game
• Concept
• Improve Geographic
Knowledge
• Design
• Country Based
• Geographically Aware
• Fun Fact To Improve
Retention
Faculty Innovation Project

15. • Implementation
• Promotion
• Audience
• Evaluation & Assessment
• Data Gathering
• Post Quarter
The Geo Game
Faculty Innovation Project

17. Group Winners
Students 116
Faculty 5
Staff 21
Total 142
Wildcat GeoGame Usage

18. NU Predicts Usage

19. NUpredicts Platform Architecture

20. AWS Architecture

21. • Authentication via Single Sign-On
• Directory Services (Active Directory)
• Harvesting of federated user metadata
• Directory
• SES
• Aggregation of results by:
• School
• Department/Unit (staff)
• Role (Faculty, staff, student).
Identity Management

22. Realtime UI/UX
AWS Orchestration of Services
Scoring System

23. AWS Scalability & High Availability
“SCALABILITY - ability of a system to increase the workload
on its current hardware resources (scale up); ELASTICITY -
ability of a system to increase the workload on its current and
additional (dynamically added on demand) hardware
resources (scale out); Elasticity is strongly related to
deployed-on-cloud applications.”

24. AWS Cloud Costs
•Traditional Stack
•Maintenance.
•Operating Systems
•System Level
•Application Layer
•Redundancy
•Backup and Failover
•Disaster Recovery
VS
• Serverless Architecture
• AWS Lambda
• NoSQL database
• Automate Snapshots
• API Gateway and Security
• Scalability
• High Availability
Cloud: Pay as you GoOn Prem: Fixed Costs

25. Next Stages of Development
1. Creator Experience
2. Administrative Interface
Reporting and Data Visualization Metrics
3. Learning Tools Interoperability Component

26. •Build Intuitive UI/UX playground for creating
game instances.
•Enable end-users to create their own
prediction games.
•Publish game instances as standalone web
apps or embeddable widgets.
Next Stages of Development
Creator Experience

27. •User and Group Management
•Reporting Tools
•Data Visualization Metrics
•API to access the exported
data.
Next Stages of Development
Administrative Interface

28. Next Stages of Development
Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI)
•Build LTI component
•Enable integration of the
NUpredicts platform with
Learning Management
Systems:
•Instructure Canvas
•Faculty creates and manages
all the content and end-user
experience.
from imsglobal

29. •Offer the NUpredicts via the
LTI / App Store.
•Any faculty member can
‘enable’ it for their course.
Next Stages of Development
LTI / App Store

30. Faculty Engagement
Pilot Project for integration with Canvas
•Faculty Buy-In.
•Early Adopters
•Distribute outside of Northwestern

31. Questions?