STUDENT ID :

INTAKE ID :

STUDENT NAME :

A. Project Title

“Telespace” – Intelligent Assignment Submission System

B. Brief description on project background. (i.e. problem context, rationale,

description problem area, nature of challenge)

Problem Context
Integrating a new application into an existing system is the troublesome part for most
company. It is because each application is developed under different platform, techniques
and by different personnel. Currently, APIIT University/College is using the traditional way
to manage student assignments. For example, students need to go to the assignment
submission department to submit their assignments. The department staffs then needs to pack
it into a bundle, and lecturers are required to collect it from the department. Lecturers will
also need to check the assignment submissions from the students in order to acknowledge
those who have or have not send in their assignments. By doing so, this enables lecturers to
notify students who fail to submit their assignments on time. Other than that, Extenuating
Circumstances form will be given to every student as evidence to proof the submission of
assignment. So when time goes by, it is a huge cost for the APIIT University/College to
spend on printing the Extenuating Circumstances (EC) form. Besides that, human tends to
make mistakes especially in rush, if the assignment has been printed out but students intended
to do some modifications on it, they have to print it out again and extra cost will be added.
Day by day, global warming issues are getting worse and the earth’s surface temperatures
have increased since 1880. The last decade has brought temperatures to the highest
levels ever recorded, and the last year of the decade (2009) was tied for the second
warmest year in the modern record (Anonymous, 2010). Apart from that, some of the
students might need to travel from far and just for the sake of submitting their assignment,
extra expenses will be added and carbon footprint will be produce while burning fossil fuels
that is emitted from the transport. Student assignments will be increasing from time to time,
in order to store student assignments; APIIT University/College needs to expand to a larger
storage and might need to rent extra storages just for the purpose of keeping student
assignments.

Rationale
According to the problems stated above, an online assignment submission system “Telespace”
will be a standalone web application which allows students to submit their assignment via an
online portal. APIIT University/College and students will definitely reduce the paper usage
on printing of Extenuating Circumstances form and assignment. The advantages will be cost
saving for both parties and much convenience for the administration staffs to manage student
assignments and paper work. Besides that, administration staffs would be able to export the
student assessment data from the system according to the batch that selected by the admin.
This can definitely reduce the workload of the administration staffs. For the outcome of the
web application, there are two types of benefits:

Tangible Benefits:
 A greener environment while reducing the usage of papers, it makes employees
happier for contributing to a good cause and thus resulting to a higher
productivity level (Cassandra Walsh & Adam J. Sulkowski, 2010).
 Cost saving, money and resources can be saved due to the elimination on the usage of
Extenuating Circumstances form and student assignments.
 APIIT University/College does not need to expand or rent extra storages for the sake
of storing student assignments.
 Reduce workload of administration staffs and lecturers. Lecturer no need to manually
tracking on who fail to submit their assignment and they can just download student
assignment instead of manually collect from the assignment submission department.

Intangible Benefits:
 Student assignments will be much secure since it has been protected and only
authorized personnel can download or view it.
 Much convenience for students to submit their assignment, and easier for lecturers to
keep track on those who fail to submit their assignments.
  Decreasing rate of late submission of the assignment with the assignment submission
reminder. (Turn-it-in the leading academic plagiarism detector will not allow late
submission to be uploading. Unless the instructor has changed the option which
allows late submission after the due date.) This will make students be more punctual
to submit their assignment before due.

Tangible Benefits:

 Allocate the current location of users within a short time frame when the alert button
is activated.
 Helps users to plan their route according to choice of preference, will be extremely
useful for new travelers from different location.
 The “Zone” button redirects within few seconds once the button is click/tab.
Here, alert message from the mobile/device will be sent to GPS server in order to
track the location of the device.

Approximation

Serial No Name of Benefits Approximation of Approximation

Actual Cost Cost of Benefits

1. Cost of data plan (Maxis) RM 50 Block charging

Surfing Quota 2GB RM10
Surfing Quota 50MB

2. . Cost of SMS(Maxis) RM 50 RM 30
5-15sen/SMS 15-10sen/SMS
Includes Free1500
SMS.

Intangible Benefits:

 User satisfaction, as this GPS application is design to be useful and depenable during
emergency situation.

Nature of Challenge
First of all, I need to fulfill the user browsing experience. Different users might view the web
application in different screen resolution, browser and version of browser. Besides that,
implementing a micro site on smart phone like iPhone will be part of the challenge on my
project. While developing the web application, security of the website will definitely be
taken into consideration. For example, prevention on SQL Injection, encryption of the
student information and filtering the upload file extension from the user will be some of the
ways to enhance to security level of the web application. There will be need to understand
how SQL injection attack the system, and the concepts of different existing encryption
algorithm in order to choose the suitable one. The last but not least, PHP object-oriented
programming will be the most challenging part on how to structure my project.

C. Brief description of project objectives. (i.e. scope of proposal and deliverables)

Deliverables
The Intelligent Online Submission System – “Telespace” allows students to submit their
assignments online as long as their personal computer are connected to the Internet. By using
this system, students will not need to purposely travel from far just for the sake of submit
their assignment. After students submit their assignment, lecturer can easily keep track on
who fail to submit the assignment. Apart from that, administration staffs would be able to
export the student assessment data from the system according to the batch that selected by the
admin. This can definitely reduce the workload of the administration staffs. Below are the
cores functions of the system will be achieved before delivering.
 Allow end-users to login and logout from the system.
 Allow students to submit their assignment via the online with remarks.
 Allow students to check their assignment assessment.
 Allow lecturers to submit the assignment assessment.
 Allow students to download their assignment.
 Allow lecturers to update the information of the module.
 Allow students to update their personal information and privacy information.

Besides that, the additional features of the system are as follows.

 Allow lecturers to upload the assignment questions and set the submission date and
time.
  Allow administration staffs to update the current semester modules for the student.
 Assignment submission reminder for the student.
 Allow lecturers to send a message to multiple students in one time.
 Allow administration staffs to export student assignment assessment into a proper
Excel format.

Apart from that, the special features of the system will be added if there is any extra
time.
 Allow students to check their date of submission for the assignment, particular
module information and assessment of the assignment via smart phone – iPhone.
 SMS notifications to notify the student is there are any new incoming message and
assignment submission reminder.
 Record user actions with a logs file.

D. Brief description of the resources needed by the proposal. (i.e. hardware,

software, access to information / expertise, user involvement etc.)

Hardware
The minimum requirements for hardware for the personal computer to successfully carry out
and meet the objectives of the system are as follows:
 Processor – Pentium 4 2.66A (2.66 GHz)
 Random Access Memory (RAM) – 512MB
 Keyboard & Mouse
 Router (RJ45 / Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi))

Software

The minimum software requirements for the development and execution of the project are as
follows:

Code Editor and Database Management System (DBMS)

 Net Beans 6.8
 MySQL Version 5 or phpMyAdmin 3.3.9

Server-Side Scripting, Web Server and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Software
  PHP 5.3.1
 Apache 2.2.17
 FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.37

Documentation and Planning

 Microsoft Project 2007
 Microsoft Word 2007

Access to information / expertise

The development of the system will require consultation from IT experts who are
experienced in developing web applications and security field. Apart from that, information
may be gathered from interviews and surveys done from the assignment department staffs
and lecturers of APIIT.

User Involvement

The people who are involved are students, lecturers, and administrators. Different levels
users like novice user, casual user and expert user will be involve. I will interview
administration staffs who are currently working on manual assignment submission work.
Apart from that, I will try to get feedbacks from students regarding to system, and also to
lecturers of APIIT University/College. These users will be assisting on the usability testing
phase.

E. Academic research being carried out and other information, techniques being
learnt. (i.e. what are the names of books you are going to read / data sets you are
going to use)

In order to carry out the deliverables, the preliminary list of books and web pages I will study
are as follows.
Books
 Name: PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition)
Author: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
  Name: Learning PHP 5
Author: David Sklar
Publisher: O’Reilly Media

 Name: jQuery Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for jQuery Developers

(Animal Guide)
Author: Cody Lindley
Publisher: O’Reilly Media

 Name: JavaScript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition (Beginner's Guide

(Osborne Mcgraw Hill))
Author: John Pollock
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media

 Name: SQL Injection Attacks and Defense

Author: Justin Clarke
Publisher: Syngress

 Name: CSS: The Missing Manual

Author: David Sawyer McFarland
Publisher: O’Reilly Media

 Name: Stunning CSS3: A project-based guide to the latest in CSS (Voices

That Matter)
Author: Zoe Mickley Gillenwater
Publisher: New Riders Press

 Name: HTML5: Up and Running

Author: Mark Pilgrim
Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Online Resources
  Anonymous. (Unknown). SQL Injection: How to Prevent Security Flaws in PHP /
MySQL. Available: http://www.learnphponline.com/security/sql-injection-
prevention-mysql-php. Last accessed 25th June 2011.

 Anonymous. (2010). 2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest

Decade. Available: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/. Last accessed
27th June 2011.

 Cassandra Walsh, Adam J. Sulkowski. (2010). Interdisciplinary Environmental

Review. A greener company makes for happier employees more so than does a more
valuable one: a regression analysis of employee satisfaction, perceived environmental
performance and firm financial value. 11 (4), p274-282.

 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Information Service.
(2005). Selecting a development approach. Available:
http://www.cms.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/Downloads/SelectingDevelopment
Approach.pdf. Last accessed 28th June 2011.

F. Brief description of the development plan for the proposed project. (i.e. which
software methodology and why, the major areas of functions to be developed and
the order in which developed)

System Development Methodology

A system development methodology refers to the framework that is used to structure,
plan, and control the process of developing an information system (Centers for Medicare
& Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Information Service, 2008). In the market, there are
various choices of software development methodology and I have chosen two different
software development methodologies which I think are the most suitable to structure, plan
and control the development process. The first acceptable system development methodology
will be Waterfall methodology. It is a linear framework type and the project will be divided
into sequential phases, with some overlaps between each phases. The phase will be strictly
controlled to ensure it is in sequence. For example, system design phase must be completed
before proceeding to the coding phase. Besides that, it is an ideal methodology for
supporting less experienced project managers and the progress of the system
development can be easily been measure (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
(CMS) Office of Information Service, 2008). Apart from that, another acceptable system
development methodology will be Prototyping methodology. This will be slightly different
with Waterfall methodology. In Prototyping methodology, project risk will be minimized
by breaking the project into segments. Besides that, it helps to identify the problems at the
early stage and refine the system to meets the users’ requirements or expectations. Other than
that, it provides quick implementation; identify confusing or difficult functions and
missing functionality (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of
Information Service, 2008).

G. Brief description of the evaluation and test plan for the proposed project. (i.e.
what is the success criteria and how will be evaluated and implementation will be
tested, indicate the estimated size of the demonstration / test database)

Success Criteria
The main goal of “Telespace” assignment submission system will rely on the features of
uploading assignments to the portal, messaging from lecturer to students, real-time
notifications, and assignment submission reminder regarding to the day leftover. In order to
make sure the system is functioning well before delivering, 5 students and lecturers from
different field will conduct the testing as follows.

Unit Testing
In unit testing, a small part of a testable unit will be taken from the application, and tested to
see whether it behaves exactly with the deliverables. Each unit will be tested separately and
this would include user login page, assignment submission and messaging and real-time
notifications. For example, in the login module, the minimum length of username should not
be lesser than 6 digits and not more than 10 digits. All these units must go through a testing
phase before integrated into a component.

Integration Testing
In integration testing, two tested units are combined into a component. For example,
administrator updates a new list of modules for this batch of students from the back-end, the
front-end view for students will changed and it will fetch the new data from the database. For
this phase, blind text will be applied in order to test the functionality level of the front-end,
back-end with the database.

Usability Testing
In usability testing, the satisfaction level of the end-users must be carried out. Participants of
this testing phase will apply actual input on how real users use the system. Besides that, they
will evaluate the system based on few aspects such as the graphical user interface (GUI),
feedback message and the response time of the system. For example, the graphical user
interface of the system needs to refine it if it is not user-friendly for a novice user and casual
user.