Online Project and Assignment Submission, Management and Progress Monitoring System (OPAS)
Online Project and Assignment Submission, Management and Progress Monitoring System (OPAS)
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Abstract— Online Project and Assignment daily life. Parents send their children to the best
Submission, Management and Progress Monitoring colleges and universities that they can afford to
System (OPAS) is a system that enable the student make sure their children can acquire knowledge
to submit their assignment or project online without and ready for work. One of the first
submitting any physical file. This system is requirements for recruitment in specialized
integrated with Turnitin system to check the fields is higher education degrees. According to
plagiarism percentage. Before the submission, the
Value of Education, an average of annual
student needs to update their progress to the system
and the lecturer able to view the progress and give earnings of full time employee with bachelor’s
comments online. OPAS is providing an online degree is 1.8 times the employee without higher
discussion, document sharing for student and education [1].
lecturer and web real time communication Meanwhile, higher education providers
technology. Any project that behind the schedule, such as Universities are becoming more
the system will be able to send an alert to the competitive and more concerned about their
student to notify the status. This paper is reviewing quality. It is obvious that universities are
several similar system and technologies that going concerned about their image and rank in
to be used in developing the prototype. The system national and international states [2].
design for assignment and project submission Universities are ranked based on their
process is being discussed. The working prototype
performance and quality which are the main
was developed and some functionalities are
highlighted. The impact of the system to students, concerns of students as well as their future
lecturers and university are discussed. The proposed employers.
system helps reducing and minimizing human error, Since the beginning academic education
capable to assist supervisors in process controlling has been evolving and improving itself using
and managing students. Supervisors can check the different techniques and practices. Higher
student projects’ statuses, the uploaded files online education is consisting of courses, exams and
and assist them while they are working in the projects that need to be accomplished to be able
project if necessary. The proposed system decreases to get a bachelor’s or master’s degree. In
the complexity of managing projects for student by modern academic curriculum, the projects are
providing them with the current status of their becoming more and more important. Time
projects and the progresses with their supervisors.
limitation is an undeniable issue that people
Moreover, the proposed system allows supervisors
to share documents and files with their students and face in daily life and work. Student projects are
communicate with them through video call and text not an exception and most of student and
chat. supervisors face this issue during the project
progress. Students hardly can manage their time
Keywords: component; Turnitin Integration, to do their projects and meet their supervisors.
Online project and assignment submission, Online This paper will discuss on prototype that will
Project Management and Monitoring System,web attempt to help in overcoming these issues and
real time communication, document sharing. provide a good experience for the users.
INTRODUCTION
I. The objective of OPAS system is to be
able to monitor and control the students’
Nowadays, higher education has
assignment or project progress as the following:
become one of the most necessary factors in
To increase student and supervisor quizzes with automated feedback to
accessibility and availability. students could be conducted online.
To ensure projects are always on-track Grading and Assessment – Upload and set
and on-time by proving project assignment datelines with ability to review
management and monitoring. and edit assignments for grading purposes
To facilitate file-sharing (increase directly in the browser. Students able to
accessibility and availability of files) as view on assignment dateline alerts and
well as reducing redundancy through submit assignment online and see if the
online repository. assignments submitted have been graded.
To facilitate communication and Consistent grading in parallel with the
collaboration between supervisor and review process while giving feedback on
student by use of collaboration tools. the students’ performance.
Communication, Collaboration and
This paper will discuss several similar Engagement – Knowing what needs
systems, objectives, functions and system attention, sharing and discovery of
design of the proposed system, technologies educational, asynchronous discussions
used for system development, prototype and the among peers, notifications for up-to-date
impact of the system to students, lecturers and information and any alerts that the students
universities. they should be aware of. Alerts could be
received via e-mail. Participation of the
students could be graded as well.
II. SIMILAR SYSTEM REVIEW
Monitor Activity and Progress - Instructor
A. Blackboard Learning Management System Dashboard monitors activity and progress
such as tracking each student usage of
Blackboard Inc. known as a well courses. Educator can trace on all students
established developer of education software or individual students within the course
which provides powerful and flexible eLearning including tracing individual assignment.
platform systems for educational instructions Date and time stamps are available allowing
since more than a decade. Some of the for identification of late assignments.
Blackboard learning and teaching functions are Calendar: Educators can use this function to
to deliver content management and sharing, post due dates for assignments and tests.
communication and virtual collaboration which
Retention Center - Retention factors
includes - online assessments, student progress
towards student engagement to the
tracking, assignment and grading management,
educators’ attention, speedy alerting the
as well as create, appraise, analyze, and
student potential risk and permitting
determine data about of campus activities all at
educator to act instantly. This function
once. The functions allow educators,
enables to aid students when they begin
administrators and students to learn and share
showing signs of falling below the
materials in an integrated online as virtual
expectation or disconnect in their subjects.
campus systems. Blackboard can integrate
The function enables by monitoring their
online learning tools with in-class learning tools
performance in missed deadlines, ongoing
[3]. Some of the various functions;
grades, course activity and course access
Course Delivery and Management – Course
[3] [4].
central repository, manage and create
courses online, and the management of
B. EdmodoSocial Learning Platform
content updates. The course contents could
be personalized and enable knowledge
Edmodo is a "social learning platform"
reuse. Slides, hyperlinks, diagrams,
website similar to Facebook, founded by two
pictures or other audio/video files could be
people in 2008 [6]. Edmodo works in a very
shared. Multiple-choices or true-false
similar fashion as Facebook, with closed
network, home screen looks like Facebook, and classrooms through their feedbacks to
a feed of students' activity in the right hand quizzes, assignments, and discussion posts.
column, which links to all of the courses in the Personalize with apps – User friendly apps
left hand column, and tabs to access and which provide personalization learning for
manage courses at the top of the column [5]. As each student. These apps aid educators to
an online networking application for educators, intensify their lesson plans and integrate
students and parents, it is in a controlled with Edmodo, delivering all of the digital
environment appropriate for schools, colleges content from the social learning platform
and universities. It is functional as a free-of- Current use of Edmodo can create polls for
charge tool for communication with over student responses, linking video clips,
500,000 students worldwide [6]. Some of the create learning groups, posting and plan
various functions; scheduled with a calendar [7].
Engage students – Educators conduct
classroom discussions online, carry out C. Evaluation
survey to test for student understanding,
and grant badges to relevant students for Based on both Blackboard and Edmodo
their score and performance. Students can has the capabilities of the following;
connect with themselves within the same 1. Set assignment datelines, assignment
group under the educator supervision. submission and assignment reminder,
Safe and closed network - No personal grading and assessment
information should be shared. Educators 2. Communication, collaboration,
can differentiate instruction by creating engagement messaging and feedback
subgroups of students. It provides a secure 3. Calendar, reminders on important events
and private environment where the educator 4. Sharing of information and files
invites the members of the group. This 5. Monitor and measure student progress
controls who can interact with the members Educators should be able to track student
of the group [7]. progress on the assignment but it requires
Connect to resources – an online
several actions including setting dates and
networking to connect educators to actions, referring to many different interfaces
students, administrators, parents, and and need to cross check on the interfaces. This
publishers. Establish online learning may be too time-consuming to check on
conversation between educators and individual students and not practical if there are
students, as well as within the class/group. number of students. The assignment comments
Different types of files and folders are or feedback is also requires different interface.
available to be shared, including posting Therefore the propose system would eliminate
assignments. Students may turn in their this problem, by using project management tool
assignments or upload assignments for their in the interface.
teachers to view and grade. Teachers can Both tools do not have the capacity to
comment on the assignments directly in track and monitor student project as the project
Edmodo to provide instant feedback on has many faces with different milestone.
what grades the students obtain [7]. Therefore, this paper will be recommending
collaboration with project management tool and
Measure student progress – Tracking
turnitin system.
students’ progress is being done via online,
grades and badges are stored and
accessible. Badges are awarded to students III. COMPARISON BETWEEN CURRENT
as recognitions for their achievements to SYSTEM AND OPAS
motivate their online
participations. Educators measure the Most universities in Malaysia have
students’ performance in their virtual different methods of assignment or project
submission. Some of the assignment and project
require many interactions between the students administrati
and lecturers. These processes can be very on office
extensive and will eventually become Assignment/Proj Lecturer Lecturer
uncontrollable due to the size of students, ect Collection receive download
workload and different deadlines. The table assignment assignment
below highlighting the manual process from from the
experiencing at most universities including Asia administrato online
Pacific University of Technology and r system
Innovation (APU). The table also provides the Assignment/Proj The Online
comparison of the proposed system. ect feedback feedback feedback
form with
Table1. Table of comparison between current the grade
system and OPAS will be
Functions Manual OPAS distributed
(Current to the
system) students
Booking Online Online Assignment/Proj During face Online
appointment consultation consultation ect review to face document
booking via booking via discussion sharing while
separate the one or send lecturer type
system system through e- comments,
Monitor and In Online mail student can
Control classroom monitoring: immediately
during 1. Admin can review the
tutorial or edit start comments.
via and due Receive Download Turitin
consultation date, so Plagiarism report from Turitin integration
hours that website allows OPAS
student to create
can view Plagiarism
2. View using
Gantt Turnitin
chart using
graphical
interface IV. PROPOSED SYSTEM
Discussion Face to face Online
at the communicati This proposed system is a tool for
University’s on educational industry to be used for the
meeting management of student assignment or projects.
room This system is a web based system which will
Alert notification Manual alert Auto email help educational organizations such as
to the student universities and colleges to improve the process
if the of managing students’ projects. This system
progress will allow the students to communicate and
percentage discuss their project or assignment with their
less than supervisor. Moreover, supervisors will be able
target to see the progress of the students’ projects and
Assignment/Proj Submit Upload the their work. This system allows supervisors to
ect submission assignment assignment track the productivity and effort of the student
at online in projects and help them with projects if it is
necessary. This system can help universities o Show the percentage of
and other educational firms to increase their assignment/project progress
productivity and quality of services. Figure 1 o Notify users if he/her is behind
shows the use case diagram for overall system. schedule projects.
o Online repository for projects
o Link to the Turnitin integrated
system
Submission functionalities
o Uploading and downloading
files by lecturers and students
Communication functionalities that
allow to:
o Collaborative communication
between student and supervisor
o System would provide Text chat.
o Would allow private messaging
between students and
supervisors.
o Would provide screen sharing
features.
o Would Provide online slide
presentation.
Figure 2 shows the process flow of an
Figure1. System Use Case assignment or project submission by students.
The process is as the followings:
Firstly the students need to login to the
Online Student Project Management system. If the user is the first time user,
system could help students in configuring their they need to register to the system first.
projects task and help them to manage their Then, students can upload their documents
projects. This system will allow students to to the OPAS which has Turnitin integrated
interact and communicate with their supervisor. to it. This will allow the system to generate
Besides that this system also will allow Reports using Turnitin features.
supervisor to keep track of the students and The students able to view project status
look up their progress and help them if it is that will provide information such as start
necessary. This system will keep supervisor date, due date, plagiarism report, Gantt
updated on the progress of their supervisees. chart and percentage of progress.
The functionalities of the proposed system are If the progress is behind the schedule, the
as follows: students will need to submit their reasons
Monitoring and Control functionalities to the system and an email will be sent to
that able to: the student.
o Provide worldwide access to the Any discussion needed, the student will
system. need to upload the files that they are going
o Assign and edit projects status to discuss with their lecturer and start with
by Admin the online communication. During online
o Provide project management tool discussion, the system able to provide
o Provide authorization for screen sharing of the documentation to be
supervisors to view and track discussed between the student and lecturer.
supervisees projects by The lecturer able to identify and comments
administrator
on which part of documentation that need which are Web Pages, Web Forms, and MVC
to improve. [8]. Each model is appropriate for different task
as the following;
1. Web Pages model is the simplest
ASP.NET
o Simple website development
2. Web Form model is the traditional
ASP.NET event driven development
o Reuses of controls throughout the
development of the website
3. MVC model separates the web
application into Models, Views, and
Controller.
o Separation of elements into three
different modules
Other than the above, ASP.NET has the
following advantages [9]:
1. Access to .NET Framework which
extend the windows API and Reach
Library.
2. ASP.NET runs on Server side and
creates HTML codes that are being
displayed by most of browsers
3. Supports C# object oriented language.
4. Platform independence (user can access
Figure 2. Submission Process for user: Students the web app by most regular browsers.)
5. Massive resources and component
6. Reusable codes and controls.
V. TECHNOLOGIES REVIEW 7. Integration with ADO.NET and
A. Programming language VistaDB for database design and
control.
8. Full support of XML, CSS, HTML and
OPAS system is a web-enabled AJAX
application, therefore web application
framework has been considered in the
development process. The web application Additional languages - AJAX
framework (WAF) has a software
framework that is designed to support the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
development of dynamic websites, code reuse (AJAX) is a technique for creating dynamic
and provides collection of libraries and tools. web pages. AJAX allows updating web pages
Framework provides a trustable establishment asynchronously by exchanging small amount of
for system development which assures that the data without need to reload the whole page [8].
establishment is less vulnerable and less prone Before AJAX, in order to update content of a
to bugs web page, it was necessary to reload the entire
ASP.NET web page. This disadvantage was a limitation
for server side applications which needed to
ASP.NET is a framework to develop communicate with the associated server
webpage and websites. This framework continuously and update the entire page all over
supports HTML, JavaScript, CSS and server again.
scripting. ASP.NET has three different models
AJAX allows dynamic webpages to Web-RTC was initially supported by Google,
communicate with servers in a more optimized Mozilla and Opera. Web-RTC currently is
way. This technique allows web transaction to available on Chrome, Firefox Nightly, Opera,
overcome the limitation of stateless request- and it will be available on Internet Explorers
response protocol [10]. newer version [11].
MSSQL
VIII. CONCLUSION