An Android Application for University Based Academic Solution by IJEID

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 userfriendly 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 www.ijeid.com

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

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) (a) Fig. 1: (a) User’s login and (b) Preliminary interface with school information of Independent University, Bangladesh. www.ijeid.com

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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. www.ijeid.com

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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. www.ijeid.com

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

CASE STUDY 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

away from his university campus. Especially he misses 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. www.ijeid.com

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An android application for university based academic solution Secondly, aid was given to the ones who are facing difficulty to start up the application. After providing them with assistance all the participants were able to install and use the application without any external help. Next thing is to let them open, run, customize according to their preference and create their own profile. To find out how they are using the application according to their comfort zone. But if still they face problem difficulty in using the application, we sort it out on whichever part of application they are unable to operate. So, they can to use it properly. Our final target is to judge especially after solving their problem regarding application. How effortlessly and smoothly they are using the application for their university purposes. Finally, we have learned that the implementation of this application, through which a student can keep records and get their study materials [11-14].

RESULTS From this evaluation of the system, all the participants were given the device to use the application for same time duration. Although the time might vary due to participantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s having different adaptability and knowledge with application. The overall outcome of the experiment on the participants can be summarized as follows: First participant could read but his knowledge on Android application is very minimum. So, initially he had a hard time to adjust himself with the application. He found it quite complicated in the beginning session. However, he improved continuously session by session. By the final two sessions (9 session) he could run the application effortlessly, find his information on course instructor and he was positive on using the Android application. Although participant two is familiar with Android devices, but she leads a busy life to attend sessions. However, she attended overall eight sessions in total and run the application smoothly by the end of these sessions. She seems to be very interested to use the application on regular basis for her professional life in university [15-17]. Participant three has adequate knowledge on Android and the application than previous two participants and used most of the options without any external support. For him seven sessions was enough to get complete use of all the options of the application. Participant four was a very quick learner and had experiences using Android device. It took only four sessions for him to know the complete use of this application. He was very positive on using this application which helps him a lot to get his study material and lecture notes. Participant five has completely different experiences in the beginning with the application. She took extra sessions (total eleven sessions) to open and run the www.ijeid.com

Khan et al. application. But she finds it fascinating because of application is helping in her studies. Overall, we tried to capture all relevant information, which have been summarized in Table 1. Table 1: Participants response. Profession Previous Adaptability experience Participant 1st year Participant has In the beginning One University little session, he finds Student experience & the app (Male) knowledge on complicated, but Android his adaptability device but this is getting better kind of session by application is session. unknown to him. Name

Participant University Participant has Two Faculty some (Female) experience and familiar with Android device but not used to with these kinds of application.

By taking help from our volunteers, she easily understood the use of application in decent pace.

Participant University Three Student (Male)

User got adapted using this application within seven sessions.

This user got better knowledge than the previous two participants. He has little idea on these types of application. Participant Graduate Participant is a Four engineering quick leaner student + and also had a job lot of employer experiences in (Male) using Android device. He knows how to operate many other Android applications. Participant House wife User is almost Five + graduate new in terms student of handling Android device. So, her ability is the least among the other participant to use this application.

It took only four sessions to understand the complete use of this application.

In the beginning she really struggled a lot to understand the basic function on Android device. So, it took her 11 session to understand using the app smoothly. Page | 6

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 studentparticipants 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

[4]

[5]

[6]

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.

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FUTURE WORK

[10]

[8]

[9]

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. [11]

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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An android application for university based academic solution [16] T.J. Mehigan. “Harnessing Accelerometer Technology for Inclusive Android Learning”, 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Android Devices and Services (AndroidHCI09), Bonn, Germany, September 2009. [17] F. K. de Heer-Menlah, “An Investigation into Wireless Technology for M-Learning at GIMPA”, 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training, May 2008.

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