International Journal of Excellence Innovation and Development
||Volume 2, Issue 1, Jan. 2019||Page No. 001-008||
An Android Application for University Based
Academic Solution
Md. Nasfikur R. Khan, Robin Roy, Faisal Bin Shahin, Mehdi Alam,
Sk Adif Farhan, Abdul Muneen Al Hasani
School of Engineering & Computer Science, Independent University, Bangladesh
Abstract––Nowadays people feel more comfortable to
use Android phone for their regular day-to-day activities.
Besides, it creates an easy access to achieve any goal in a
tight schedule. Along that, affordable smart-phone
technologies are introducing newer communication
possibilities that were not imaginable a few years back.
Considering the impact of this Android technology on
the students, we have designed and constructed an
Android application named ‘IUB - SECS’. The objective
was to build an effective application for students and
faculty members of Independent University, Bangladesh
to accomplish specific educational goals and duties by
using an Android application. By using this application,
students can find course information, lecture notes,
faculty information, research information and updated
results from outside the campus. On the other hand,
faculty members can use it for online attendance,
updating course materials, lecture notes and information
related to the course and university. The application will
provide users the opportunity to create a database, where
profile of faculty members and students can be stored
and through it students can directly contact with the
faculty members. The usability and effectiveness of this
application have been evaluated based on five different
users. The practical result shows that the outcome of this
application is very promising.
Keywords––Android application, university, faculty,
customize, lecture, course, attendance, grades
INTRODUCTION
In the 21st century, the internet and the advancing
technology have seen many backlashes for its misuse.
Sadly, its good aspects are being overlooked. The
connectivity among users and the plethora of
information that it provides us at the click of a button is
incredible. But the media and entertainment industry
have overshadowed all the positive ways that the
progressing technology is improving our lives.
Technology has advanced so much that handheld
devices, like smart phones and tablets, have enabled
people to seek information whenever and wherever they
may need it. A large part of students uses this aspect of
sharing information through a more accessible and user-
friendly medium to know more about what they are
studying [1].
With the changing world, the education system needs to
be changed to adapt to the ever-changing man and how
he seeks knowledge. Living in an environment where
almost every student use a smart phone tells a lot about
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how to engage these students more with the University
programs. Academic students receive notification or
important announcement through emails or social media,
such as Facebook, for their course information and
materials. But as we know, they are not the right
platform nor do they create the right atmosphere for
school bodies to interact with its scholars/pupils [2].
Additionally, instead of integrating students to our aged
methods of information sharing where students have to
be present in university campus to look for important
announcements hung up in notice boards or going to the
official websites that may have a confusing interface due
to a greater number of schools using the same page to
share their own information, we can reshape our method
to achieve the goal of swift information sharing through
Android application. For a student, an Android
application becomes a step easier to access and obtain
information.
Such Android applications are already in place in other
well-known Universities, such as Harvard University,
and have proven to be beneficial. Repeatedly logging
into an account can also be tedious and frustrating.
Having an app that remembers your Login information
securely makes the whole process of accessing
University database much simpler and swift. This
Android platform will also enable faculty members to
give quicker instructions, guidance, and announcement
for the students. The sudden surge in the speed and
accessibility of transmitting data wirelessly to handheld
devices do play a huge role into why using such medium
can be helpful [3].
Researchers have aimed to develop and provide a
generalized solution to monitor various works that are
carried out by a college for automation of various tasks.
They provided up to date information of the system
which improved the efficiency of university record
management and decrease the room between student and
college [4].
Another application provided a generalized solution to
monitor the various works that were carried out by a
construction company at different geological points. By
using a Web Service, the data was stored in the remote
database. This mobile application requires Wi-Fi
technology to reach the remote database [5]. Although
several sections of this application can be browsed
without internet as it has storage facilities of saving data
through fire-base data storage system. Another
application also allows lecturers to take the attendance of
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An android application for university based academic solution
students via smart phone. First of all lecturers need to
login to the phone application, get connected with the
server and take attendance using smart phone. After
taking the attendance through mobile, lecturers need to
send the updated list to the server using internet [6].
Another app also gives the lecturers of flexibility to edit
the attendance by logging on to their profile. It allows
the students to see their own attendance as well as
curriculum information [7].
With all these are in mind, an Android-based application
has been developed, where the students and Faculty
members can use this application with their university
Login ID. At first, student will choose their school, then
their department. Under the department, they can select
“Course”, “Faculty”, “Research”, “Publication”, or
“Result”. They will have access to a simple interface that
will guide them through the Course Updates, Faculty
details, Research groups and their information, and
semester results. Currently, the university Android
application is being developed for mobile but broadening
its reach for IOS and other OS devices is a future goal
for this application. Due to this application taking the
user to the webpage of the selected option, it requires
network connection to be fully of use.
METHODOLOGY
The process starts with an Interface of login and new
user registration option, which helps to login or opening
a new account, along that, it allows user to gain access
on this application. Figures 1 (a) and (b) show the
interface of the user’s login procedure. Next step leads
towards user’s profile with four different options. First
option is followed by a layout of different schools, in
(a)
Fig. 1: (a) User’s login and (b) Preliminary interface with school information of Independent University, Bangladesh.
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Khan et al.
which user gets the opportunity to select school and
specific department. After selecting the specific
department, it allows the user to get into another layout
of list including the course detail, faculty information,
research updates and publications. By selecting a
specific option, user gets the opportunity to view the
details of that section [8].
Figures 2 (a) and (b) demonstrate the interface of School
of Engineering and Computer Science and interface of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering department’s
profile. After getting into the profile of a specific
department, user gets the opportunity to select the tab
s/he wants to browse [9, 10]. Figures 3(a) and (b) show
the interfaces of courses and faculty tabs, which help the
users to get the updated information of the courses and
faculty members. The profiles of two distinguish faculty
members have been mentioned in the Fig.4.
Lastly, the Android application also has the opportunity
to check grades and take attendance. In Fig.5, an
interface of grades of a student has been shown. The
overall working procedure is described through a
flowchart as shown in Fig.6.
Through this application students can get their necessary
materials like soft copy of books, lecture notes, sample
questions etc. for their study purposes. They can also
closely see their faculty members’ educational
background and their research field through links which
is provided over there. For an emergency, students can
send email to their specific course instructor and the
email of the instructor is provided on their profile by
clicking on MORE DETAILS options as shown in Fig.4.
(b)
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 International Journal of Excellence Innovation and Development
||Volume 2, Issue 1, Jan. 2019||Page No. 001-008||

(a) (b)
Fig. 2: (a) Interface of different departments of School of Engineering and Computer Science (b) Various information
of EEE department.

(a) (b)
Fig. 3: (a) Courses information and (b) Faculty list of EEE department of Independent University, Bangladesh.

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An android application for university based academic solution Khan et al.

Fig. 4: Profiles of two distinguish professors of EEE department of Independent University,

Bangladesh (with permission).

Fig. 5: Grade of a specific semester of a student.

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 International Journal of Excellence Innovation and Development
||Volume 2, Issue 1, Jan. 2019||Page No. 001-008||

CASE STUDY away from his university campus. Especially he misses

As an attempt to implement our “IUB-SECS” project,
we performed experiments on five users from diverse
background, which help us to achieve our goal to
establish the application for all kinds of users by
providing a simple solution to their academic problem.
The following leads to their introduction:
Participant one
A 19 years old boy, first year undergraduate student of
the department of Economics. He came from a small
town to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh for better
education. His knowledge on Android phone is
minimum. Now he wants to email to one of his course
instructors. But not being able to do it because he needs
to know his course instructor email address.
Participant two
She is a 45 years old university faculty member, who has
competed her graduation and post-graduation from
distinguish universities of Canada. In current semester,
she needs to take her classes on a room with no
computer facilities and that is why she needs to take
attendance of students manually through paper which is
time consuming. She has a better understanding of
Android phone and similar application.
Participant three
He is a 21 years old boy from the BBA department, who
is currently studying in 4th semester. Every day he
travels a lot to attend his classes because he lives far
classes at 8:00AM due to traffic jam. Now he needs to
gather those lecture notes. He has adequate knowledge
on Android devices and application.
Participant four
He is a 25 years old graduate engineering student, who
got admitted in a university to complete his post
graduation. He is also doing a job to support his family.
Due to job purpose, he couldn't attend all of his classes.
He is expert in using Android device and its application.
Participant five
She is a 24 years old housewife and a graduate student,
who has been married recently. She needs the study
materials for her upcoming exam. Her ability is
minimum on using Android based applications.
EXPERIMENTS
Step by step methods have been followed to check the
experiences of five different participants. Kind of
support they got from the Android application on regular
uses for university purposes. The procedures were as
follows:
First of all, handover the Android device to the
participants especially who are very less familiar with
Android applications. Priorities were given to them on
the beginning for providing adequate training to get used
to Android devices. After four sessions with Android
devices, we let them use the application to adapt to it.

Fig. 6: Block diagram for the working procedure of the application.

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An android application for university based academic solution Khan et al.

Secondly, aid was given to the ones who are facing application. But she finds it fascinating because of
difficulty to start up the application. After providing application is helping in her studies.
them with assistance all the participants were able to
install and use the application without any external help. Overall, we tried to capture all relevant information,
Next thing is to let them open, run, customize according which have been summarized in Table 1.
to their preference and create their own profile. To find
out how they are using the application according to their Table 1: Participants response.
comfort zone. Name Profession Previous Adaptability
experience
But if still they face problem difficulty in using the Participant 1st year Participant has In the beginning
application, we sort it out on whichever part of One University little session, he finds
application they are unable to operate. So, they can to Student experience & the app
use it properly. (Male) knowledge on complicated, but
Android his adaptability
Our final target is to judge especially after solving their device but this is getting better
problem regarding application. How effortlessly and kind of session by
smoothly they are using the application for their application is session.
university purposes. Finally, we have learned that the unknown to
implementation of this application, through which a him.
student can keep records and get their study materials
[11-14]. Participant University Participant has By taking help
Two Faculty some from our
RESULTS (Female) experience and volunteers, she
From this evaluation of the system, all the participants familiar with easily
were given the device to use the application for same Android understood the
time duration. Although the time might vary due to device but not use of
participant’s having different adaptability and used to with application in
knowledge with application. The overall outcome of the these kinds of decent pace.
experiment on the participants can be summarized as application.
follows: Participant University This user got User got
First participant could read but his knowledge on Android Three Student better adapted using
application is very minimum. So, initially he had a hard (Male) knowledge this application
time to adjust himself with the application. He found it than the within seven
quite complicated in the beginning session. However, he previous two sessions.
improved continuously session by session. By the final participants.
two sessions (9 session) he could run the application He has little
effortlessly, find his information on course instructor and idea on these
he was positive on using the Android application. types of
application.
Although participant two is familiar with Android Participant Graduate Participant is a It took only four
devices, but she leads a busy life to attend sessions. Four engineering quick leaner sessions to
However, she attended overall eight sessions in total and student + and also had a understand the
run the application smoothly by the end of these job lot of complete use of
sessions. She seems to be very interested to use the employer experiences in this application.
application on regular basis for her professional life in (Male) using Android
university [15-17]. device. He
knows how to
Participant three has adequate knowledge on Android operate many
and the application than previous two participants and other Android
used most of the options without any external support. applications.
For him seven sessions was enough to get complete use
Participant House wife User is almost In the beginning
of all the options of the application.
Five + graduate new in terms she really
student of handling struggled a lot
Participant four was a very quick learner and had
Android to understand
experiences using Android device. It took only four
device. So, her the basic
sessions for him to know the complete use of this
ability is the function on
application. He was very positive on using this
least among Android device.
application which helps him a lot to get his study
the other So, it took her
material and lecture notes.
participant to 11 session to
use this understand
Participant five has completely different experiences in
application. using the app
the beginning with the application. She took extra
smoothly.
sessions (total eleven sessions) to open and run the

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 International Journal of Excellence Innovation and Development
||Volume 2, Issue 1, Jan. 2019||Page No. 001-008||
In short it is understood that all five participants were
comfortable with the application and they utilized the
application effectively without any external help by the
end of eleven sessions as Android devices are very
accessible making it easy for the participants to adapt
with the app [16-18]. Besides, all four student-
participants were also very impressed with the fact that
such an app which might lead them to save more time
and effort to collect more study information and course
materials along the benefit of visiting the faculty
member’s profile and availability. The proposed app was
well appreciated by the participant two, who is currently
working as a faculty member in the EEE department of
IUB. Additionally, she wants to involve in the
development of this application and working to enhance
it’s usability in future.
CONCLUSION
An integrated solution of university management system
for students and faculty members has been developed by
using an Android application, which includes course
materials, course information, faculty details, research
updates, publications and results information for student
users. The app also includes online attendance, news,
information and course update facilities for faculty
members by using individual profiles. Finding faculty
member’s appointment gets easier than ever as this app
will allow users to contact the faculty directly through
email. Besides this application is synchronized with
university websites and allow the user to directly get
information from there.
FUTURE WORK
The overall performance of this proposed Android
application is quite positive with a few sections to be
updated in future. A major update would be to allow
students to register and withdraw for different courses
directly through the application.
Acknowledgment
Authors would like to thank Independent University,
Bangladesh to encourage us to develop this application.
They also would like to thank Mohammad Masud Uddin
Khan to share his inside to improve the quality of the
application, which will be implemented in the final
updated version.
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