STUDENT ID INTAKE ID STUDENT NAME

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A. Project Title Telespace Intelligent Assignment Submission System

B. Brief description on project background. (i.e. problem context, rationale, description problem area, nature of challenge)

Problem Context Integrating a new application into an existing system is the troublesome part for most company. It is because each application is developed under different platform, techniques and by different personnel. Currently, APIIT University/College is using the traditional way to manage student assignments. For example, students need to go to the assignment submission department to submit their assignments. The department staffs then needs to pack it into a bundle, and lecturers are required to collect it from the department. Lecturers will also need to check the assignment submissions from the students in order to acknowledge those who have or have not send in their assignments. By doing so, this enables lecturers to notify students who fail to submit their assignments on time. Other than that, Extenuating Circumstances form will be given to every student as evidence to proof the submission of assignment. So when time goes by, it is a huge cost for the APIIT University/College to spend on printing the Extenuating Circumstances (EC) form. Besides that, human tends to make mistakes especially in rush, if the assignment has been printed out but students intended to do some modifications on it, they have to print it out again and extra cost will be added. Day by day, global warming issues are getting worse and the earths surface temperatures have increased since 1880. The last decade has brought temperatures to the highest levels ever recorded, and the last year of the decade (2009) was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record (Anonymous, 2010). Apart from that, some of the students might need to travel from far and just for the sake of submitting their assignment,

extra expenses will be added and carbon footprint will be produce while burning fossil fuels that is emitted from the transport. Student assignments will be increasing from time to time, in order to store student assignments; APIIT University/College needs to expand to a larger storage and might need to rent extra storages just for the purpose of keeping student assignments.

Rationale According to the problems stated above, an online assignment submission system Telespace will be a standalone web application which allows students to submit their assignment via an online portal. APIIT University/College and students will definitely reduce the paper usage on printing of Extenuating Circumstances form and assignment. The advantages will be cost saving for both parties and much convenience for the administration staffs to manage student assignments and paper work. Besides that, administration staffs would be able to export the student assessment data from the system according to the batch that selected by the admin. This can definitely reduce the workload of the administration staffs. For the outcome of the web application, there are two types of benefits:

Tangible Benefits: A greener environment while reducing the usage of papers, it makes employees happier for contributing to a good cause and thus resulting to a higher productivity level (Cassandra Walsh & Adam J. Sulkowski, 2010). Cost saving, money and resources can be saved due to the elimination on the usage of Extenuating Circumstances form and student assignments. APIIT University/College does not need to expand or rent extra storages for the sake of storing student assignments. Reduce workload of administration staffs and lecturers. Lecturer no need to manually tracking on who fail to submit their assignment and they can just download student assignment instead of manually collect from the assignment submission department.

Intangible Benefits: Student assignments will be much secure since it has been protected and only authorized personnel can download or view it. Much convenience for students to submit their assignment, and easier for lecturers to keep track on those who fail to submit their assignments.

Decreasing rate of late submission of the assignment with the assignment submission reminder. (Turn-it-in the leading academic plagiarism detector will not allow late submission to be uploading. Unless the instructor has changed the option which allows late submission after the due date.) This will make students be more punctual to submit their assignment before due.

Nature of Challenge First of all, I need to fulfill the user browsing experience. Different users might view the web application in different screen resolution, browser and version of browser. Besides that, implementing a micro site on smart phone like iPhone will be part of the challenge on my project. While developing the web application, security of the website will definitely be taken into consideration. For example, prevention on SQL Injection, encryption of the student information and filtering the upload file extension from the user will be some of the ways to enhance to security level of the web application. There will be need to understand how SQL injection attack the system, and the concepts of different existing encryption algorithm in order to choose the suitable one. The last but not least, PHP object-oriented programming will be the most challenging part on how to structure my project.

C. Brief description of project objectives. (i.e. scope of proposal and deliverables)

Deliverables The Intelligent Online Submission System Telespace allows students to submit their assignments online as long as their personal computer are connected to the Internet. By using this system, students will not need to purposely travel from far just for the sake of submit their assignment. After students submit their assignment, lecturer can easily keep track on who fail to submit the assignment. Apart from that, administration staffs would be able to export the student assessment data from the system according to the batch that selected by the admin. This can definitely reduce the workload of the administration staffs. Below are the cores functions of the system will be achieved before delivering. Allow end-users to login and logout from the system. Allow students to submit their assignment via the online with remarks. Allow students to check their assignment assessment.

Allow lecturers to submit the assignment assessment. Allow students to download their assignment. Allow lecturers to update the information of the module. Allow students to update their personal information and privacy information.

Besides that, the additional features of the system are as follows. Allow lecturers to upload the assignment questions and set the submission date and time. Allow administration staffs to update the current semester modules for the student. Assignment submission reminder for the student. Allow lecturers to send a message to multiple students in one time. Allow administration staffs to export student assignment assessment into a proper Excel format.

Apart from that, the special features of the system will be added if there is any extra time. Allow students to check their date of submission for the assignment, particular module information and assessment of the assignment via smart phone iPhone. SMS notifications to notify the student is there are any new incoming message and assignment submission reminder. Record user actions with a logs file.

D. Brief description of the resources needed by the proposal. (i.e. hardware, software, access to information / expertise, user involvement etc.)

Hardware The minimum requirements for hardware for the personal computer to successfully carry out and meet the objectives of the system are as follows: Processor Pentium 4 2.66A (2.66 GHz) Random Access Memory (RAM) 512MB Keyboard & Mouse Router (RJ45 / Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi))

Software

The minimum software requirements for the development and execution of the project are as follows: Code Editor and Database Management System (DBMS) Net Beans 6.8 MySQL Version 5 or phpMyAdmin 3.3.9

Server-Side Scripting, Web Server and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Software PHP 5.3.1 Apache 2.2.17 FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.37

Documentation and Planning Microsoft Project 2007 Microsoft Word 2007

Access to information / expertise The development of the system will require consultation from IT experts who are experienced in developing web applications and security field. Apart from that, information may be gathered from interviews and surveys done from the assignment department staffs and lecturers of APIIT.

User Involvement The people who are involved are students, lecturers, and administrators. Different levels users like novice user, casual user and expert user will be involve. I will interview

administration staffs who are currently working on manual assignment submission work. Apart from that, I will try to get feedbacks from students regarding to system, and also to lecturers of APIIT University/College. These users will be assisting on the usability testing phase.

E. Academic research being carried out and other information, techniques being learnt. (i.e. what are the names of books you are going to read / data sets you are going to use)

In order to carry out the deliverables, the preliminary list of books and web pages I will study are as follows. Books Name: Author: Publisher: PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition) Luke Welling, Laura Thomson Addison-Wesley Professional

Name: Author: Publisher:

Learning PHP 5 David Sklar OReilly Media

Name:

jQuery Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for jQuery Developers (Animal Guide)

Author: Publisher:

Cody Lindley OReilly Media

Name:

JavaScript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition (Beginner's Guide (Osborne Mcgraw Hill))

Author: Publisher:

John Pollock McGraw-Hill Osborne Media

Name: Author: Publisher:

SQL Injection Attacks and Defense Justin Clarke Syngress

Name: Author: Publisher:

CSS: The Missing Manual David Sawyer McFarland OReilly Media

Name:

Stunning CSS3: A project-based guide to the latest in CSS (Voices That Matter)

Author: Publisher:

Zoe Mickley Gillenwater New Riders Press

Name: Author: Publisher:

HTML5: Up and Running Mark Pilgrim O'Reilly Media

Online Resources Anonymous. (Unknown). SQL Injection: How to Prevent Security Flaws in PHP / MySQL. Available: http://www.learnphponline.com/security/sql-injectionprevention-mysql-php. Last accessed 25th June 2011.

Anonymous. (2010). 2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade. Available: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/. Last accessed 27th June 2011.

Cassandra Walsh, Adam J. Sulkowski. (2010). Interdisciplinary Environmental Review. A greener company makes for happier employees more so than does a more valuable one: a regression analysis of employee satisfaction, perceived environmental performance and firm financial value. 11 (4), p274-282.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Information Service. (2005). Selecting a development approach. Available: http://www.cms.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/Downloads/SelectingDevelopment Approach.pdf. Last accessed 28th June 2011.

F. Brief description of the development plan for the proposed project. (i.e. which software methodology and why, the major areas of functions to be developed and the order in which developed)

Methodology A system development methodology refers to the framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Information Service, 2008). In the market, there are various choices of software development methodology and I have chosen two different software development methodologies which I think are the most suitable to structure, plan

and control the development process. The first acceptable system development methodology will be Waterfall methodology. It is a linear framework type and the project will be divided into sequential phases, with some overlaps between each phases. The phase will be strictly controlled to ensure it is in sequence. For example, system design phase must be completed before proceeding to the coding phase. Besides that, it is an ideal methodology for supporting less experienced project managers and the progress of the system development can be easily been measure (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Information Service, 2008). Apart from that, another acceptable system development methodology will be Prototyping methodology. This will be slightly different with Waterfall methodology. In Prototyping methodology, project risk will be minimized by breaking the project into segments. Besides that, it helps to identify the problems at the early stage and refine the system to meets the users requirements or expectations. Other than that, it provides quick implementation; identify confusing or difficult functions and missing functionality (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Information Service, 2008).

G. Brief description of the evaluation and test plan for the proposed project. (i.e. what is the success criteria and how will be evaluated and implementation will be tested, indicate the estimated size of the demonstration / test database)

Success Criteria The main goal of Telespace assignment submission system will rely on the features of uploading assignments to the portal, messaging from lecturer to students, real-time notifications, and assignment submission reminder regarding to the day leftover. In order to make sure the system is functioning well before delivering, 5 students and lecturers from different field will conduct the testing as follows.

Unit Testing In unit testing, a small part of a testable unit will be taken from the application, and tested to see whether it behaves exactly with the deliverables. Each unit will be tested separately and this would include user login page, assignment submission and messaging and real-time notifications. For example, in the login module, the minimum length of username should not be lesser than 6 digits and not more than 10 digits. All these units must go through a testing phase before integrated into a component.

Integration Testing In integration testing, two tested units are combined into a component. For example, administrator updates a new list of modules for this batch of students from the back-end, the front-end view for students will changed and it will fetch the new data from the database. For this phase, blind text will be applied in order to test the functionality level of the front-end, back-end with the database.

Usability Testing In usability testing, the satisfaction level of the end-users must be carried out. Participants of this testing phase will apply actual input on how real users use the system. Besides that, they will evaluate the system based on few aspects such as the graphical user interface (GUI), feedback message and the response time of the system. For example, the graphical user interface of the system needs to refine it if it is not user-friendly for a novice user and casual user.