ODA BULTUM UNIVERSITY

INISTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

PROJECT PROPOSAL

STUDENT’S FORUM AND RESOURCES SHARING ONLINE PLATFORM (ODA

FORUM)
08.06.20
Project Initiator

KALKIDAN SHIMEKIT (BSC.)

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
EMAIL: KALKIDAN9129@GMAIL.COM
TELEPHONE: +251-922-819443

June, 2020
Chiro Ethiopia
 Table of Content

List of tables...................................................................................................................................ii
Acronyms......................................................................................................................................iii
1 INTROUCTION.....................................................................................................................1
1.1 Background......................................................................................................................1
1.2 The Existing System........................................................................................................2
1.3 Problem Statement..........................................................................................................2
1.4 Objective of the Project..................................................................................................3
1.4.1 General Objective....................................................................................................3
1.4.2 Specific Objective.....................................................................................................3
2 LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................................................4
3 METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................................6
3.1 Data Collection Methods................................................................................................6
3.2 Data Interpretation.........................................................................................................6
3.3 Implementation...............................................................................................................7
4 PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN....................................................................................8
4.1 Time Management plan..................................................................................................8
5 FEASIBILTY..........................................................................................................................9
5.1 Technical Feasibility.......................................................................................................9
5.2 Schedule Feasibility.........................................................................................................9
5.3 Scope.................................................................................................................................9
5.4 Budget Breakdown........................................................................................................10
REFERENCE...............................................................................................................................11
List of tables
Table 1 : Time management Gantt chart.........................................................................................8
Table 2 : Budget Breakdown..........................................................................................................10
 ACRONYMS
OBU Oda Bultum University

HTML Hyper-Text Markup Language

CSS Cascading Style Sheet
PHP Hypertext Pre-processor
MySQL My Structured Query Language
ODF Online Discussion Forum
 1 INTROUCTION
1.1 Background

Online platforms support so many of our daily activities that we have become dependent on them
in our personal and professional lives. We rely on them to find information online, to keep in
touch with other and share idea. We use them for entertainment, news, transportation,
accommodation, education and so many other purposes. Online platforms which are designed for
the education system enables users get information easily and in an organized way. Education
Platforms have the potential to make learning easy and effective by making use of ICT systems.
An online platform, when used in the appropriate context, its value exceeds from just merely
increasing student engagement to fostering critical analysis, reflection and social construction of
knowledge [1]. Students like to utilize critical thinking skill using discussion boards because it
force them to read other perspective and carefully consider a respond [2].

One of the most important online platform in higher education system is an online system on
which students exchange ideas and learning resources, ask and answer questions and
communicate easily. This platform comprises two main categories. The first category is an
online forum on which students ask questions and share ideas and lecturers participate by giving
response. The second part is resources sharing platform that enables lecturers upload books and
students utilize and also upload exams projects and worksheets for ease of access of others.

Using such online platform, students can get all materials of the university in a soft copy. Not
only students but also lecturers will be sharing files easily using already structured platform for
each field, department, year, semester and course. Among many importance of the platform
some are listed below:

 Students will be able to ask questions, share ideas, answer others’ questions.
 Students will be able to send assignments and other relevant files to their
lecturers.
 Lecturers will be able respond to students question and raise their ideas.
 Lectures will be able to upload learning resources to their students.

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 Students will be able to be notified by a telegram bot when their lecturers upload
books and their question get a new answer.

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1.2 The Existing System
Students get academic resources from their lecturers either using portable devices or through
emails. Educational resources like projects, exams and worksheets of the past academic years are
found dispersed among students and copy and printing shops. Most of the time students ask
questions, discuss and share ideas by physically contacting their lecturers or other students.

1.3 Problem Statement

Currently in our country’s government higher education institutions, teaching learning process is
not well supported by online platforms. There is a lack of well-organized resources sharing and
question and answer forum platform designed specifically to fit the higher education. Resources
sharing is time consuming. Few students get files on time and others have to wait them to have
for their own. Especially during this time of pandemic, students couldn’t get resources to read at
their home. Even after the pandemic is passed, there is much of time wastage to get books,
exams, projects and worksheets on time. The resources are not well organized. Especially fresh
students’ life is more difficult in this case.

The expected outcome of the proposed solution is to fill the indicated gaps and much more gaps
by developing a structured, interactive and an easy to use web based online platform that enables
lecturers and students can use wherever they are. The forum part of the website is also the most
interesting category to make students share their views online. This in turn makes campus life
easier.

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1.4 Objective of the Project
1.4.1 General Objective
To design, develop and implement Student’s Forum and Resources Sharing Online Platform.

1.4.2 Specific Objective

To achieve the general objective the following specific objectives will be attained:

 To decide which frame suits for project quality.

 To design UI and Process flow.

 To develop and implement methodology and frame chosen effectively.

 To test and fix bugs of the implementation.

 To host and maintain the platform and give support for the client.

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2 LITERATURE REVIEW
As the increasing interest in using Internet and web communication technology; the online
discussion forum has being increasing used by a lot instructors to help support classroom
learning. In the Student Interactions in Online Discussion Forum: Empirical Research from
‘Media Richness Theory’ Perspective, it indicates, “The use of online discussion forum has
emerged as a common tool and an effective way of engaging students outside the classroom. The
online discussion forum is an e-learning platform that allows students to post messages to the
discussion threads, interact and receive feedback from other students and instructor, and foster
deeper understanding towards the subject under study. In an ODF there is no loss of data as the
students’ written messages are stored in the virtual space, and can be retrieved and reviewed
anytime. It also provides students the flexibility of time and place to reflect on the previous
postings to the discussion thread and thus actively engages them in a meaningful and intellectual
experience [2].”

In the Center for teaching’s Blogs and discussion Board article, it describes the online discussion
board is “similar to blogs, a discussion board allows multiple people to respond to comments and
questions. They are threaded, in that one in a response to a particular message is nested under the
message to which it is a response. Replies that are associated with the same post are grouped
together, creating message threads that can be expanded and collapsed. The nesting is usually
indicated in the online environment by indentation, much as the organization of major and minor
points is indicated in a formal outline by indentation.” According to the study done on the
Education Center for Applied Research of undergraduate students, 21% of students would like
instructor to increase of online forum and 21% like instructor to increase the usage of online
discussion board. And Students prefer, and say they learn more in, classes with online
components [3].

According to the study from the WPI teaching with technology collaborator. “The students are
more like to utilize critical thinking skill using discussion boards because it force students to read
other perspective and carefully consider a respond. In addition, students participate more
regularly and in a more thoughtful manner than they would normally do in face to face

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instructional setting because many students are very intimidated by speak in face-to-face
classroom, those who are simply shy or quiet [4].”

However, one of the blogs in Discovery through E-Learning article point out that “the
Discussion threads can become complicated and go off topic from the original posting. The can
also become tedious as one general thought often splits into many thoughts (posts) and then each
of these needs to be responded to separately. This is where some participants will begin to feel
the threads become more argumentative instead of collaborative.” But it also point out that
“Discussion boards/threads are a great resource tool for allowing participants to freely express
their thoughts on a common topic at their own pace and leisure. Participants can scroll forwards
and backwards through a conversation to see the overall structure. A sense of virtual
communities can be established through frequent contributors. Also as Lucy mention they
basically replace the face-to-face discussions that occur within the classroom setting [5].”

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 3. METHODOLOGY

2.1 Data Collection Methods

The study area is mainly OBU and students of OBU. Both primary and secondary data will be
used in this study. Supply side information will be obtained from schools administration and the
students using an online chats and phone calls which is already on progress. 

To accomplish this project we need many collections of data from different individuals for each
part of this project.  Firstly, we will prepare a questionnaire with a list of questions that are
answered by a number of university’s staff members so that information could be collected from
the answers.

Besides proposing questionnaires for third parties and interviewing the third party, the
developers of the system are currently in the education curriculum so we can point the problems
from our experiences and propose solutions that we believe will solve the problems we and our
friends face. So, our experience in the current Ethiopian Education system would be a great input
for the project we are developing.

2.2 Data Interpretation

The data collected to start-up the system as well as all resources on the system will be in the
form of digital Educational Material such as videos, audios, and written documents (PDFs and
Word Documents) and are only shared with certified and limited persons responsibly.

The survey instrument was designed on the basis of the project proposal objectives. Prior to
conducting the survey, we, the group members, have discussed each and single answers we had
and came to one common solution.

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2.3 Implementation

The system is going to be a web based application. For the system to be achieved, the team will
use latest web development technologies like (HTML5, CSS3, BOOTSRAP, JAVASCRIPT,
JQUERY, AJAX, MySQL, PHP and others) to achieve high performance and high quality end
product. For immediate updates and notification from the website, a handy telegram bot will be
developed using node js.

Characteristics of the system are quality management, time management, risk management, and
coding standard, hence it requires customer feedback, continuous improvement, and response to
change, and motivated team from the beginning to the end. Thus the system being built requires,
from time to time, communication with the user to obtain additional requirements that will
become an indispensable asset that will aid the project to leap forward into new territory of
advancement and quality that is sought.

Throughout the development process the project will follow the Evolutionary model. We
believed that Instead of building and then delivering the system in a single “big bang” release we
instead deliver it incrementally over time.  Initially a rapid version of the product is being
developed. The initial product may not address the users' needs but it helps the team to find out
more requirements and then the product will be developed to a more accurate version with the
help of the reviewers who review the product after each release and submit improvements. In this
whole development process we can effectively use skills and resources among all the team
members.

This project will be upgraded in the development environment. Code will be written and tested in
the development environment. When all of the code works, the project will be upgraded and a
new application will be migrated. The school administration, selected parents and teachers will
test all of their scenarios. When those scenarios are successful then the new application can be
moved to Production. The project will be upgraded immediately prior to the new application
being moved to production.

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3 PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN
3.1 Time Management plan

Task ID Task Description

JUNE JULYMAY

W1

W3

W2

W3
W2

W4

W1

W4
1 Brainstorming Ideas
2 Proposal Development
3 Requirement Eliciation
4 Initial Version
5 Intermediate Version
6 Final Version
7 Data Collection
8 Initial Version
9 Intermediate Version
10 Final Version
11 Design
12 Initial Version
13 Intermediate Version
14 Final Version
15 Implementation
16 Initial Version
17 Intermediate Version
18 Final Version
19 Testing
20 Initial Version
21 Intermediate Version
22 Final Version
23 Finalizing Project

Table 1 : Time management Gantt chart.

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4 FEASIBILTY
4.1 Technical Feasibility

The website is expected to flourish students and teachers for the high quality of education by
making academic resources available online. Therefore, the website should be easily accessible
and user-friendly and the users should have access to computers or hand held mobile devises to
ensure the applicability of our desired system of the scope mentioned in the Scope section of this
project. One or three hour of training will be enough to use this system effectively and wisely by
the administration of the university.

4.2 Schedule Feasibility

The time schedule for this project to be launched has been done in the Project Schedule section.
And the time schedule will depend on the time it will take to get the necessary resources and
most importantly the requirement for the project.

4.3 Scope

This project will be used by all students of the university registered formally for courses. And is
available wherever there is an internet connection starting from a 2G network. The platform
will not be available to individuals not a member of the campus.

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4.4 Budget Breakdown

Tasks Quantities Unit Total

Price Price(Birr)
(Birr)
Consultation on Website Strategy
1 90,000.00 90,000.00
Including creation of 3 or 4 design themes.
Project Management Services
1 90,000.00 90,000.00
Including Scheduling estimating and client
contact.
Web Design Services
1 200,000.00 200,000.00
Including Scheduling estimating and client
contact.
Web Development
1 550,000.00 550,000.00
Including coding of HTML, CSS,
BOOTSTRAP integration, JS, PHP and
more.
Telegram Bot Design Development
1 200,000.00 350,000.00
Including coding of server using NODE JS
and PHP and host.
Production/Implementation
1 100,000.00 100,000.00
Including Beta testing of Website, resolve
issue and launch website
Content Migration
1 150,000.00 150,000.00
Including domain and host.
Training, Testing and Consultation
1 10,000.00 10,000.00
Including preparation of training, testing and
documentation materials
Total 1,440,000.00

Table 2 : Budget Breakdown.

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REFERENCE
[1] Thomas, M. J. W. (2002). Learning within incoherent structures: The space of online
discussion forums. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18 (3), 351 – 366.

[2] Dahlstrom, Eden, Tom De Boor, Peter Grunwald, and Martha Vockley. "NAtioNAl Study of
UNdERgRAduAtE StudENtS ANd INfoRmAtioN TEChNology." ECAR. N.p., 2011. Web.

[3] M S, Balaji, and Chakrabarti Diganta. "Student Interactions in Online Discussion Forum:
Empirical Research from ‘Media Richness Theory’ Perspective." Journal of Interactive Online
Learning. N.p., 01 Mar. 2010. Web.

[4] Parish, Tracy. "Advantages/Disadvantages of Discussion Boards in the Online Classroom."

Discovery Through Elearning. N.p., 15 May 2007. Web. 14 Apr. 2013.

[5] Vanderbilt University. "Center for Teaching." Vanderbilt University Blogs and Discussion
Boards. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2013.

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