International Journal of Information and Education Technology, Vol. 3, No.

2, April 2013

Building a Final Year Project on Social Network

Platform: Challenges and Opportunities
Gary K. W. Wong, Wing-Yi Hui, and Sze-Wing Yuk

tomorrow are most likely enhanced with virtual presence in

cyberspace allowing students and teachers to participate in
the learning sessions called Virtual Classroom [2]. Although
challenges in developing and delivering lessons in this virtual
environment are inevitable [3], research concludes that
students report better understanding of subject matter and
providing structure to study regularly as the main benefits of
attending virtual classes [4]. Other advantages such as
flexibility in frequency and duration of the sessions,
possibility in replaying recorded sessions, and features for
hand raising and feedback can fill up the gaps where
face-to-face context is hard to implement [4].
No doubt, final year project has been one of the most
important components in the study of computer science in
general [5]-[8]. With the projects, students are able to
combine what they have learned and apply all the skills
together. Given the goodness of social network platform and
the virtual classroom mentioned previously, we came up an
idea to combine them together to form a virtual classroom
through a social network. Thus, we proposed a new final year
project called Virtual Classroom Game (VCG) for one group
of students in the Higher Diploma in Computer Studies (PC
System and Network Administration) in the college this year.
This paper aims to summarize the experience and challenges
facing in this project. Yet, this has set a future direction of
how this project can grow further.
Through this Virtual Classroom Game (VCG) project, the
students have developed and implemented the following
goals:
To allow students to extend classroom learning to online
social network platform;
To provide basic course management system
functionalities to support teaching and learning;
To enhance the learning motivation by integrating
gaming elements into virtual classroom; and
To introduce direct alternative for peer students to
commute and discuss online.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II describes
related works to the effectiveness of conducting FYP issue
using the virtual classroom concept. Section III presents the
course structures and outcomes offered in our college. Then,
we will introduce the VCG and share the challenges and
opportunity in Section IV and V. In Section VI, it will explain
the teaching and learning evaluations report to confirm the
teaching and learning effective. We summarize the paper
contributions and the conclusions in Section VII.

AbstractVirtual classroom is a classroom that connects to

the Internet in order to provide online collaborative learning
environment. Virtual classroom offers classes at any time and in
any place where students can participate in the class through
many different feasible ways, such as video instruction,
assignments, and communication tools. With all these features,
learning can becomes exciting and dynamic. In addition, online
social networks such as Facebook attract large number of
students nowadays. Yet, existing social network applications
have not yet been targeted on student learning. Since most
students are already connected via social networks, building
virtual classroom with some gaming elements can benefit the
teaching and learning. In this paper, it aims to share the
teaching and learning experience on conducting a final year
project (FYP) for the higher diploma students, which requires
them to build the Virtual Classroom Game (VCG) on the online
social network platform, Facebook. The challenges and
opportunities are discussed and provided in this work targeting
for sub-degree colleges particularly. Based on this experience,
FYP continues to be recommended and conducted even for
sub-degree students as long as the instructors can evaluate and
observe the proposed guidelines in this paper.

Index TermsCapstone projects, curriculum design,

online/e-learning and blended learning, educational games and
simulations, sub-degree programmes.

I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, online social networks has been grown and
spread significantly, particularly among the college students.
According to the research findings, near 90% of
undergraduate students in the United States using at least one
social network platform on a regular basis [1]. Social
networks such as Facebook and MySpace are now among the
top ten visited websites on the Internet [1].
Obviously, students have now taken their real-world social
networks to the virtual world. Furthermore, these major
platforms offer developers sources and tools to create
applications by leveraging the underlying social graphs. With
the introduction of these third-party applications, an increase
in the social network traffic has been observed [1]. Given the
increasing of penetration rate among users, applications
running on these social platforms will continue to serve as
one major reason of people using the networks.
On the other hand, virtual learning environments have
received great attention. Classrooms and laboratories of
Manuscript received September 20, 2012; revised January 13, 2013.
G. Wong is with the Department of Mathematics and Information
Technology, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, China
(e-mail: [email protected]).
W. Hui and S. Yuk were with the Community College at Lingnan
University, Hong Kong, China.

DOI: 10.7763/IJIET.2013.V3.264

II. RELATED WORKS

Some existing virtual classrooms have been built with
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D. Indicative Content
The course is centered on an individual/small group
project, chosen by a student or a student group, which solves
a business or technical problem. The project essentially
reinforce the use of a variety of software tools and hardware
platforms in a problem solving context, as well as further
developing the students problem solving abilities.

specific purposes. For example, The Global Virtual

Classroom [9] and eLecta Live [10] are related existing
product of virtual classroom on the Internet.
The Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) [9] is a collection
of free, online educational activities and resources. It aims to
complement the efforts of governments and education
departments around the world to integrate technology into
their classrooms and curricula and to link their schools to the
Internet. The major projects of the GVC are the annual
Contest and the Clubhouse Program. During the Contest,
teams from schools around the world compete to build web
sites that best meet contest objectives. Each team is made up
of students from schools in different countries working
together. The web sites are then judged on the quality of their
content and presentation, effective team work, and the
collaborative skills with others through knowledge sharing in
activities. The contest runs from October through April, with
winners announced and cash prizes awarded in May. eLecta
Live is also a virtual classroom and Web conferences
real-time environment for live teaching and training over the
Internet [10]. This allows users to arrange live classes, online
meetings and webinars - all taking place over the Web in real
time. eLecta Live supports live video and audio, interactive
white boards, markup and annotation tools, file and
document sharing, and screen sharing. To the best of our
knowledge, however, virtual classroom in social network has
not been considered and proposed. To motivate our students,
this topic seems to catch their attention in this year. Given the
limited time, we have only built a prototype that sets a future
direction in this application.

E. Teaching Method
Project specifications are normally developed by students,
with the assistance of their supervisors. Projects can be
implementation based and/or feasibility study type. It should
address a significant business or technical problem and
students are expected to develop a commercially realistic
solution. Projects can be carried out on an individual basis or
by small groups, provided the level of complexity warrants it
and the group can demonstrate cohesiveness. Each project is
allocated a supervisor, who is timetabled to meet the
student(s) once every week. In addition, students are
timetabled for laboratory work every week, during which a
tutor will be available for advice and assistance, and students
are expected to carry out their project work in this and their
private study time. Students are required to present and
submit their project report at the end of the course for
assessment.
F. Measurement of Learning Outcomes
1) Students take part in projects to apply and integrate the
knowledge they have learned from the courses. Students
will learn that careful preparation is necessary to have
satisfactory results. Moreover, presentation will be
required to ensure that the specified objectives have been
met.
2) Problem-solving skills are developed through applying a
range of techniques and ideas in handling real-life
problems. Students are encouraged to think
independently, and to apply appropriate control
measures in accomplishing specific tasks.
3) The teaching / learning methods enumerated above will
create a learning environment in which the students play
an active role. To achieve this, students will be
encouraged to adopt an active knowledge-seeking
attitude and to build up confidence in their own ability to
communicate and work with others.
Below is a list of grading breakdown for each component,
1) Project proposal (5%)
2) Interim report and Presentation (15%)
3) Final Project Report (70%)
4) Final Oral Presentation (10%)

III. COURSE STRUCTURE AND OUTCOMES

In this section, we present and share the two-term FYP
course under the Higher Diploma of Computer Studies (PC
System and Network Administration) with its structure and
learning outcomes.
A. Brief Course Description
This course is designed to acquaint students with the
ability to apply in-depth problem solving by applying what
they learned from the programme. The project can be the
development of a small computer system and/or feasibility
study of IT solution for practical problems.
B. Aims
This course aims at providing the opportunity for students
to link material from different courses in the programme and
to develop, in detail, an area of their own interest.
C. Learning Outcomes
It is intended that this course will enable students to:
1) follow up an area of interest;
2) summarize their previous studies;
3) identify and define problems;
4) analyse and design the solution;
5) implement the solution;
6) demonstrate their understanding in the systems
development cycle;
7) further develop project management and organization
skills.

IV. VIRTUAL CLASSROOM GAME (VCG)

Based on the course structure and learning outcomes, it is
appropriate to design a project that can first attract the
students to choose, and motivate them to complete a project
within their trained skills and knowledge. To consider
attraction, we recognize that many students have a social
connection in a selected online social network in todays
world. From observation, students have already found
themselves a virtual connected online network such that they
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can share information and interest. Naturally, we can build an

application integrated with a social network to enhance
teaching and learning. Thus, the concept of VCG has been
proposed and was chosen by a group of students.

Implementation, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance.

Each of them has its own importance and plays a significant
role in the product development. There are several models
with different advantages, they are agile model, spiral model,
waterfall model and modified waterfall model. And we will
adopt modified waterfall model as development process, just
like the figure shown in Fig. 2.

A. Objectives
The objective of this project is to build a virtual classroom
game (VCG) on the Facebook to simulate the learning
environment as in classroom. Teacher can deliver both
synchronous and asynchronous instructions to students on
the platform. Students come to the school and choose which
class they want to attend. Student can interact with each other
on the virtual classroom to carry out regular teaching and
learning activities such as group discussion, quiz, timed
competitions, and collaboration on tasks. Within the VCG,
students can choose to participate in outside classroom
games. Frequent participation can generate higher points on
student records. In addition, they may come into teachers
office and discuss matters individually with advices.

Fig. 2. Modified waterfall diagrams used for the VCG development.

B. System Design and Development Tools

Fig. 3. Database diagram of entity relationship model for the VCG.

Fig. 1. Users case diagram for the VCG.

The users case diagram in Fig. 1 illustrates the roles

between theStudent and theTeacher in the system.
Teacher is able to upload the video in the page of classroom.
Teacher will make the assignment, quiz and timed
competition etc. in the virtual classroom. Teachers have a
virtual character in the VCG, but unlike student, teacher
cannot gain any score. Teacher can view and download the
file of assignment and quiz of all students submitted in the
VCG, and then give a score to the work of the student in the
VCG. In addition, the VCG allows student create a virtual
character of themselves. If the score that student gets is
higher, the level of the character will also be higher. In
different level, the VCG provides different clothes for
student to select. It is sure that higher level with more choices.
Students can gain score through frequent participation in
outside classroom game, do the assignment and quiz well and
be an active member in the group discussion etc. Having this
function can motivate student use this VCG more frequent
since they might want to have higher level. Students only
allow viewing and changing the file which they submitted.
They cannot view the others.
Software Development Life Cycle is a necessary process
for the development of software products. The basic
classification of the whole process is the following. They
included Planning, Analysis, Design, Development,
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We select modified waterfall model instead of the

waterfall model because of the follow reasons. Waterfall
model has a one big disadvantage is that developer cannot go
back to the previous stage. If there is any change in the design
stage, developers are needed to redevelop the VCG from the
first stage. It is the main different among tradition waterfall
model and modified waterfall model. Modified waterfall
model allow overlap of the phrase. This permission of the
overlap increases the flexibility in developing the VCG.
Moreover, developers can make a number of tasks
concurrently. It ensures any defects in the VCG are being
removed in the development and implementation stage. In
other words, any change to the basic design is possible since
several phases can be active at same point of time. This can
reduce any oversight issues. However, disadvantages also
exist in this model. In modified waterfall model has a
drawback. It becomes difficult to trace the progress in all
stage. The timeline would turn to be more complex. This is
the awareness for the developers when they adopted the
modified waterfall model. In terms of the development tools,
we have selected to build the Facebook application using
Flash Action Scripts and PHP with the help of the Facebook
API.
C. Functional Requirements
In our VCG, we provide the following major
functionalities. Due to the time limitation and the group size

International Journal of Information and Education Technology, Vol. 3, No. 2, April 2013

issue, we have built this VCG with only a prototype

application with functions less than the original concept. To
preview, Fig. 4 shows the sample of the first screen.

period. For example, the new applications running on

Facebook require to use the SSL secure connection. Our
students took some time to readjust the codes to make the
application run smoothly. More importantly, this particular
project may be too difficult for students at the sub-degree
levels when the programming skills are yet to be polished and
trained. Thus, developing applications in the Facebook
platform is more challenging than what they expected
previously when they chose to accept the challenges.
Nevertheless, the students were still able to manage to
accomplish the objectives with good performance. At the end,
the students reported that they enjoyed building an
interesting application on a popular social platform. The
motivation is what they have taken to resolve all the issues
independently.

Fig. 4. Sample User Interface (UI) screen on the first page.

Lectures: The VCG provides lessons for students to take

anytime. The lessons are in the form of video which is
recorded and uploaded by teachers. Teachers upload the
video to the server use upload mode. Students can select the
class they liked. Also it is able to review at any time. The
page of the class selection is designed as a book.
Assignments: The assignment is in the form of question.
Teachers can create assignments for students to submit in the
upload mode. Students choose the assignment which they
need to do, and then VCG will pop up a new page for student
to do assignment. After students click the submit button, the
browser will show The assignment is submitted.
Upload: This function like as a teacher mode. Teachers
must go to this mode with an access name and password.
After that teachers can choose to upload lecture, assignment
and view the student assignment answer. In lecture, teachers
must upload the video format in flv and use an English title.
In assignment, it needs to choose the subject of assignment.
The subjects are classified to Chinese, English, Maths and
General Education. The VCG will show The Question is
successfully inserted into database. After teachers click the
submit button. Teacher also can check the students answer
by a table.
Game: The VCG is not purely for the teaching purpose.
Students and teachers can relax by joining the game. The
VCG is developed with bubble shooting game for students in
one minute and player cannot cancel until they finish the
game.
Others: Users profiles, general system settings, digital
clock, and chat room are provided supplementary functions
to enhance students communication.

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we summarize the final year project teaching
and development experience in the sub-degree levels.
Building the Virtual Classroom Game (VCG) on the
Facebook is fun but challenging. The challenges and
opportunities are discussed and provided in this work
targeting for sub-degree colleges particularly. Based on this
experience, FYP continues to be recommended and
conducted even for sub-degree students as long as the
instructors can evaluate and observe the proposed guidelines
in this paper.
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[9] Global
Virtual
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Available:
http://www.e-lecta.com/default.asp
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Live.
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http://www.virtualclassroom.org/index.html
[1]

V. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Although we have only built a prototype, our two students
were successfully to build up the VCG and give an organized
presentation as well as demonstration with satisfaction.
However, our students have encountered several issues
during this project. First, the development tools are provided
without a well organized manual or user guides to get the
implementation started easily. Some third-party books offer a
good tutorial based resources. Yet, some unexpected
outcomes stood in the way during the development cycle. In
addition, Facebook changes quite frequently during the

Gary K. W. Wong received the B.Sc. degree, Magna

Cum Laude, in Computer Science and Mathematics
(Double Majors) from Brigham Young University
Hawaii, the United States, in 2006. He also received the
M.Phil. degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering,
Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering,
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Hong Kong, China, in 2009. He received his Ph.D. in
Computer Science in 2012. He is now a Lecturer in the
Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, The Hong Kong
Institute of Education. His research interests include mobile and pervasive

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computing, wireless communication and networks, wireless multimedia
sensor networks (WMSN), wireless network coding, wireless
quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning for mobile multimedia networks,
energy efficiency optimization, and mobile IPTV.

Sze-Wing Yuk was a Higher Diploma student in the

Community College at Lingnan University.

Wing-Yi Hui was a Higher Diploma student in the

Community College at Lingnan University. Currently,
she is a full-time undergraduate in the Department of
Computing at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

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