Android App for College Management System
II.Actors in the Proposed System
Following are the roles that the users can take on in the proposed system:
1) Student: Any user that is currently studying at the university will take on the role of a student. There can be multiple students. Each student must have a unique username associated with him/her [1].
2) Professor: Any user that is assigned with a job of teaching at the university will be given the role of a professor. The professors will have their account and will be given classes as per the subjects assigned to them.
3) Staff: A person that works admin office will be assigned the role of at the university in the staff.
4) Admin: The head of departments will be the admin of that particular department. The admin will assign professors to the classes in his/her department.
5) Super-Admin: Super-Admin is basically the dean of the university. He/she can add or delete the Admin accounts. All these actors are assigned roles according to their privilege level [2]. An actor cannot access the data or any particular module that is not in accordance with his/her privilege level.
III.Modules in the proposed system
Following are the modules present in the proposed system:
1) Paper Correction Module: One of the major highlights of MP-CMF is the online paper correction module. This module allows the professors to evaluate the answer booklets while not physically being with the booklet [3] [4]. The actors that play a role in this module are: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2017)IEEE Xplore Compliant – Part Number:CFP17AWO-ART, ISBN:978-1-5090-5013-0978-1-5090-5013-0/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE156
A) Staff: The staff will scan the answer booklets and upload them to their respective professors according to the assigned class.
B) Professor: The professors will get a notification that the answer booklets have been uploaded to their profiles. These papers will only be of the classes that they have been teaching. The answer booklets can be corrected without actually being in the university premises or having the physically copy of the answer booklets [6] [7].
C) Student: As soon as the professor checks a student’s answer booklet, it is uploaded to the student’s profile wherein the student can view the corrected paper and the marks allotted to him/her. The paper auto saves the marks allocated to each question and adds them to the total. There is no need to explicitly upload the marks to the student’s profile as the marks will be uploaded tohis/her profile as soon as the paper is checked completely [8].
2) Attendance Module: The actors that play a role in the attendance module are:
A) Professor: A professor adds the daily attendance of the students who attend the lectures. He/she also has the right to update or alter these entries on the account of error in any entry.
B) Student: The attendance uploaded by the professor will be shown in the student’s profile. The attendance percentage will be automatically calculated. Additionally, the system will also show the number of lectures he/she needs to attend in order to complete the minimum criteria of qualification for appearing for the next examination.
3) Notes/ Assignments Module: This is a digital notice board available in the system. The professors and staff are able to upload notes and the students are able to view and download them. The actors that play a role in the attendance module are:
A) Professor: The professor has an option to add notes and assignments for the classes he teaches. If the professor teaches more than one class, then he/she can decide which class may be able to view the notes and assignments.
B) Staff: The staff is responsible of uploading general notices. These notices are not subject specific and are applicable to almost all the people.
C) Student: The student will get a notification whenever notes, notices or assignments are added. He/she may be able to view and download them. The notes, notices and assignments that are uploaded by the professors and the staff can only be uploaded in a certain file extensions. This will prevent the user from uploading any malware. This is a step to ensure security of the system.
4) Paper Checking Module: One of the most important modules in the system is the paper checking module. It frees the professors from the hassles of correcting the physical answer booklets, which are bound to the university campus. The paper checking module is also available to the users in the form of API and JSON Format [9]. Following steps take place in the online paper correction process: i) Once the student completes taking the examination, the Staff scans all the answer booklets [4]. These booklets are then scanned. The scanned copies need to be uploaded to the system. ii) This has to be done carefully. The reason being that only the teacher who is responsible for correcting those papers must be able to view the answer booklets. The Staff needs to distribute the uploaded booklets accordingly. Sorting is done by selecting the appropriate subject and the teacher teaching it. iii) Once the uploading and distribution is done, the Staff’s role is done. The teacher will be notified that new answer booklets have been uploaded to his/her profile. The professor will now be able to correct the answer booklets. iv) The professor is able to view the answer booklets in a .jpg format. A set of numbers ranging from the maximum one to the maximum marks of the question is visible. The default marks for each page is set to zero. The number of marks for each question can be allotted individually by dragging and dropping the score. The colour in which the score is shown can be changed manually. v) As the scores are allotted, they are saved and the total is calculated automatically. If the answer booklet is not checked completely and the correction process stops in between due to some reason, there is no need to correct that booklet all over again. The marks that were previously allotted will be saved in the system. vi) The paper will be shown to the student by uploading it to his/her profile once the checking is complete. There is no need to explicitly instruct the system to upload the marks and the answer booklet to the students’ profile. Instead, once the booklet is completely corrected, it will be uploaded automatically. This will only be done if the answer booklet is completely corrected. A partially corrected answer booklet will never be uploaded to the student’s profile. vii) The student will then be able to view the corrected answer booklet and the marks that are given to him/her.
IV.Working methodology
1) Student i) Whenever a student creates an account on the system, his/her profile is sent to the Staff for confirmation. The staff checks if the student actually studies in the university or not. Accordingly the Staff sends a confirmation email to the users’ email id. ii) After clicking on the confirmation link, the student will be directed to his/her profile page. This is the page where the student will be redirected after every login. It gives a gist of the profile. If there are any notifications, they will appear here. iii) The student can view the updated attendance, if the marks have been uploaded and the notes, notices and the assignments uploaded by the respective users. iv) The student can also view his/her personal information and can update it from time to time.
2) Professor i) The professor’s profile is created by the Admin. The Admin also assigns classes and subjects to professors. ii) The professors’ profile consists of paper checking, attendance record and the documents that the professor uploads. iii) The professor can add or update attendance from his/her profile. Uploads can also be done from the profile. The professor can also delete the files as and when required.
3) Staff i) The staff can view paper uploads, pending student verification, and recent uploads of their profile. ii) Whenever a student creates a profile, the staff needs to verify the profile and the information. The students whose verifications are still remaining appear here. iii) The Staff uploads the answer booklets and allocates them to professors according to the subject and classes. iv) Staff also adds notices on the digital noticeboard. These notices are visible to all the people using the system. The notices can be removed when required. v) One of the functionalities that the staff has is listing students. It generates a list of all the students which can be sorted through according to the need.
4) Application Programming Interface (API) In order to make our project for accessible to people we have created an API. The online paper correction module is available to the user in the form of an API. Using this API, the user, with the right knowledge, can develop the program and we can together move forward towards our aim of digitizing all educational institutes. Further, this empowers the user by providing them with certain flexibility in sense that they can make use for this API, integrate it with any suitable system thereby making an all new system.
5) Web Application The Proposed system is also available in form of web applications, which is responsive for all kind of mobile screen and resolution. [10]
6) Screenshots of the proposed System We have practically developed the proposed system and named it “PARKS” (formed by coalescing the first letter of each member’s last name).
V.. CONCLUSIONS
The Multi-Platform College Management Framework is our collective effort to modernize and digitize the way in which data is being stored in colleges/Universities. The system has a vast potential and it could be used in all the colleges. It would not only reduce the work load but also ameliorate the current state of data management paradigms implemented at various Universities and Colleges. The System integrates the indispensable functions of the manual system with the contemporary and efficient ways of managing Colleges. Easy to use API which the system is capable of providing can be easily assimilated with any system and thus an all new system can be designed with it.
