Project Abstract

In current education system, students and teachers are only connected during college
times, while rest of the time, they rarely have communication regarding education.
Thus, study becomes limited to the college hours. When we consider study, especially
engineering and technical fields, it converges more towards research than towards
formal textbook studies. And when we are considering such scenario, students will
surely need guidance from various faculties and bugging them personally over phone
would look awkward.

Currently, Social Networking has caught the trend and almost all the young
generation is using Social Networking but more towards fun and entertainment. This
system, eduConnect, adopts the idea to build a new system which will be similar
however different. This concept will be used but it will still be education oriented, but
not eliminating the entertainment of Social Media.

eduConnect will be a web-based system which will virtually map all the entities in
real world University. All objects of University, say College, Departments,
Classrooms etc will have their existence virtually in this system. Students, Faculties,
Principal, etc persons will also be the user of this sytem. So, ultimately, all objects in
eduConnect will have existence in real world also.

Using this system, any person who is a part of this system will be able to
communicate with each other. They can Talk, Chat, discuss and share information in
Forums, communicate using Private Messaging, join groups, etc.

Thus, this system will become a media for all education related entities stay in touch
will each other anytime, share information and communicate.

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 List of Figures

Figure No. Figure Description Page No

4.1 Class Diagram 13

4.2 Use-Case: Student, Faculty & HOD 14

4.3 Use-Case: College Principal & College Admin 15

4.4 Use-Case: University Head & University Admin 16

4.5 Sequence Diagram: Login 17

4.6 Sequence Diagram: Talk 18

4.7 Sequence Diagram: Send PM 19

4.8 Sequence Diagram: Create Topic 20

4.9 Sequence Diagram: Group 21

4.10 Sequence Diagram: Add College 22

4.11 Sequence Diagram: Update Profile 23

4.12 Activity Diagram: Login 24

4.13 Activity Diagram: Student Entry 25

4.14 Activity Diagram: Add College 26

4.15 Activity Diagram: Update Profile 27

4.16 Activity Diagram: Create Groups 28

4.17 Activity Diagram: Create Topic 29

4.18 Activity Diagram: Talk 30

4.19 Activity Diagram: Private Messaging 31

4.20 Dataflow Diagram: Context Level Dataflow Diagram 32

4.21 Dataflow Diagram: Talk Process 33

4.22 Dataflow Diagram: Add College Process 33

4.23 Dataflow Diagram: Create Forum Process 34

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4.24 Dataflow Diagram: Add User Process 34

4.25 Dataflow Diagram: Create Chatroom 35

4.26 Dataflow Diagram: Update College 35

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgement i

Abstract ii

List of Figures iii

Table of Contents v

Chapter 1 Introduction to Project 1-2

1.1 Concept & Fundamentals 1

1.2 Study of Existing System 1

1.3 Proposed System

1.3.1 Objective 1

1.3.2 Project Definition 1

1.3.3 Project Scope 1

1.3.4 Project Platform 1

1.3.5 Project Summary 2

Chapter 2 Detailed Description of Project 3-7

2.1 Overview 3

2.2 Features

2.2.1 Users & Permission Levels 3

2.2.2 Talks 3
2.2.3 Private Messaging
4
2.2.4 Forums
4
2.2.5 Chat
5

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 2.2.6 Groups 6

2.2.7 Misc 6

2.3 Future Extensions 6

2.4 How will it work? 7

Chapter 3 System Analysis 8-12

3.1 Fact Finding Technique 8

3.2 Feasibility Study

3.2.1 Operational 8

3.2.2 Technical 8

3.2.3 Economical 8

3.2.4 Implementation 9

3.3 Requirement Specifications

3.3.1 Functional 9

3.3.2 Non-Functional 9

3.4 Timeline Chart 10

Chapter 4 System Designing 13-35

4.1 Class Diagrams 13

4.2 User Case Diagrams 14

4.3 Sequence Diagrams 17

4.4 Activity Diagrams 24

4.5 Dataflow Diagrams 32

Chapter 5 System Development

5.1 Hardware Requirement 36

5.2 Software Requirement 36

Chapter 6 Conclusion 37

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Chapter 1: Introduction to Project

1.1 Concepts & Fundamentals

After college time, college students have no educational contacts with people related with
college and university. So we decided to build a new environment to connect those
people easily in any time at any place. We will create a system which connects all these
people together. This system will reflect virtual places of all University and College
related things. This will give an opportunity to people stay connected with the study
related stuff all the time.

1.2 Study of Existing System

Currently, no system is being used by the University to keep all students, faculties and
other related persons stay connected with each other round the clock. There are many
open source Forums or Discussion Boards available which can be used to share
information between students and related persons but they become very limited to their
own functionality. It lacks the flexibility for more integration in studies. Instead of this, a
single portal would be desired which has more flexibility and provides more functionality
than just forums.

1.3 Proposed System

1.3.1 Objective: To keep students and guides or lectures as well as the in-charge persons
of the University to stay connected with each other.

1.3.2 Project Definition: Adding social integration and use of latest Internet technology
in Education System and providing a platform for students and University people to stay
connected with each other 24x7.

1.3.3 Project Scope: This system will have several components which include Private
Messages, Talks, Forums, Chats, Groups, Events and many more. All this features will be
education oriented and somehow interesting.

1.3.4 Project Platform: This is a web-based System. System will use xHTML and CSS
for designing. Javascript and techniques like AJAX for better UX. PHP will be used for
server side scripting and MySQL as a database.

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1.3.5 Project Summary: After college time, college students have no educational
contacts with people related with college and university. So we decided to build a new
environment to connect those people easily in any time at any place. We will create a
system which connects all these people together. This system will reflect virtual places of
all University and College related things. This system will adopt the concept of Social
Networking sites and model it to make it useful in education. This system will have all
virtual places that we see in real life, like a university, colleges, departments, classes and
people that are related to educational activity. And these virtual objects won’t be limited
just to the system but this will reflect objects of real life, i.e. these all virtual objects
would have existence in real life too. So the goal of this system is to incorporate the latest
technologies and trends to make education better and interesting.

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Chapter 2: Detailed Description of Project
2.1 Overview
In these days, most of the people spend much time on social networking sites. Here, we will
have somewhat similar concept but it will be education oriented and knowledge based where
all users of system (students, faculties, principals, and others) share information and also have
some fun with education.

In this system, we are dividing whole system into different virtual places. Virtual places are
Class, Branch or Department, College and University. Here each real world entity of
education is mapped into virtual place.

2.2 Features
2.2.1 Users and Permission Levels:

In this system, there are six types of different users having different
permissions and privileges. They are as follows:

 Student: Have minimum privilege and permission.

 Faculties: These are those person who are teacher in college

 HODs: These are the head of the particular department having

privilege place in that department.

 College Admin: This is the one who manages all virtual areas and does
the work like user verification and moderation of places of college.

 Principal: Principal will have special place in college and he will be

able to see college statistics and moderate the college.

 University Admin: This will have the privilege to moderate all colleges
in that University and all management work of college verification and
maintenance will be done by this user.

 University Head: Most privileged person of the system. It will have all
permissions to see University statistics and data.

2.2.2 Talks:

Users of this system will be able to make friends. Now all users will be able to
update status or share thoughts and this will appear in Talks

These Talks are filtered in five different categories:

 Friends: Only updates from friends.

 Class: Updates from all classmates

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  Department: Updates from users in same department of same college

 College: Updates from users of same college

 University: Updates from all colleges.

This will allow users to know what’s up with friends, or in class, department,
college or in whole university. Users may be able to comment on Talks. Each
Talk will have a scope too as above categories to provide some privacy so that
particular share doesn’t go beyond its scope.

2.2.3 Private Messaging:

Private messaging will allow users to communicate with a single or multiple

users privately. This will help to discuss the issues that is not possible to be
discussed in public or in person.

2.2.4 Forums:

Forums are the integral and one of most important parts of this system. It is a
discussion board for all users. Forums allow all users to communicate with
each other, discuss on particular topics, share information and knowledge. It
will serve several purposes.

Forums have different view permissions. Forums have different visibility

scope like available just to class, department, college and university. Each
forum will have a permission group as said above and so only group in that
scope will have access to the forum. So a forum is class-level, department-
level, college-level and university-level. There may be some special groups
and it will be possible to create private forums for them too.

Forums are categorized in sections. Now, this forums having different

permissions will allow to create a branch wise, subject wise forums so that
discussion that is relates a particular group can be created and no other users
have to bother about it if it doesn’t relate him.

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 HOW WILL IT HELP SYSTEM?

Following purposes may be fulfilled by the forums:

 Forums for and private to a single class may be used to talk and discuss
about the things particular to that class and due to restricted
permission, privacy of that class will remain to that class’ students
only.

 If the assignments are to be in soft format, faculty may create a forum

private to that class and for each assignment, he/she may create a
separate topic for it in that forum where students are suppose to attach
their assignments with their post as file uploading is allowed in forums.

 Private forums may be used to discuss about problems and complains

particular to that group.

 Public forums to University may be a great medium for students of

different colleges to discuss some topics and share information.

 University level forums may also help to discuss the problems and
issues of University.

 Public forums may also help to share soft materials between the
different colleges and students.

 Forums may be used to upload photos and videos thus providing a way
to create galleries.

 This will simply help students that may fear to discuss things face-to-
face in class or college.

 There may be lots of more uses of these forums that are beyond the
scope of this report.

2.2.5 Chat:

Chat allows users to chat with all users in real time. Chat will have different
chatrooms, again having all above permissions. It can be used for real time
helps from online users or just general or study related talk. Chatrooms may
allow only person having some privilege and so online meetings between
faculties, HODs and/or principal can de organized. Thus it will serve many
purposes.

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2.2.6 Groups:

Administrator will be able to create different groups so that it can be used to

give different permissions in different places of system.

2.2.7 Misc:

There are several other functionalities of system too. Each user will have his
own profile showing his details. We will have different achievements which
users will earn based on their usage of system and how well they perform in
different places of the system.

2.3 Future Extensions

2.3.1 Events:

Users will be able to create an event online and send invitations to

users. An Event will again work like a single uses. An Event may have
one or more admins and they will be able to posts Talks like a user
does. They will be able to create few custom pages for that event.

This will also help to create events for Techfest being held in every
college, each year or semester. This will provide more exposure to the
events than in-person campaigning as it will be possible to reach to all
college just through that system in no time at all.

2.3.2 Quiz/Competitions:

Privileged users will be able to host quizzes online. Quizzes will have
many options and auto evolution of results. Scoreboards and marks
will be given for a quiz as predefined by Quiz Setter.

We are thinking about some ways so that some online competitions of

inter-class, inter-college to encourage student for studies and spark the
desire of gathering more knowledge.

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2.4 How will System work?
When system will start, University Admin will set all University details and
data. Now Admin will have rights to add a college and set its data. So if any
college is interested in joining this system, it can ask University Admin for it
and he will add the college with all necessary details. Now after colleges have
been added, College Admin will have rights to add department, class and
college related stuff. Once college is set, it’s time for students to join.
Whenever a user wants to join the system, it will apply for it online. He will
register will what type of users he is (faculty, student, etc) and fill all data
about him. Now college admin will verify this data and approve the user and
then user will be able to use the system. College Admin will have permission
to set privilege level of the user so that in future promotion and demotions of
user level can be possible. After all this, users will be able to use the system
seamlessly.

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Chapter 3: System Analysis
3.1 Fact Finding Technique
As a final year project, we wanted to develop something that may be useful for
education system. Even though, we are living in high-tech generation, we still think,
we are not using the technology to it best when it comes about study. So our team was
thinking to build a system that may enhance the use of technology in education
system to some extent.

The young generation is tending much towards the Social Media, and so concept of
having Networking in study will be very useful. But the question was how we can
make this concept “education oriented”? We are already using Forums or Discussion
boards, IRC for subject oriented chat, Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter,
Google+ etc and education portals like Moodle, but these all have some features
missing in each other. We wanted to build a System that combines all goods from
them and have all-in-one system.

We had some questionnaires and informal interviews with some students, faculties
and some other experts. We considered their suggestions and advices and came up for
this system.

3.2 Feasibility Study

3.2.1 Operational

This system does not require any special technical skills to be used. Interface
will be simple and easy to use, self explaining. All colleges and most
students/faculties have access to Internet and so it is easy to access the system.
Any person having minimal knowledge of English can use this system with
ease.

3.2.2 Technical

This system requires a web server with PHP and MySQL. University and
colleges already have web servers with these facilities and so technically, it is
feasible to deploy the system.

3.2.3 Economical

University and our college already have web hosting for their own sites.

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 3.2.4 Implementation

Our team already has good experience with Web Developement with PHP and
MySQL on server side and so it will be easy for team to build system using
them.

3.3 Requirement Specification

3.3.1 Functional

Functions expected from the systems are ability to stay connected with each
other and share information with ease. Functional requirements are Talks,
Forums, Chats, Private Messaging, Groups, etc

3.3.2 Non-Functional

3.3.2.1 Transport

System is a web-based application and so it will use HTTP protocol for

communication.

3.3.2.2 Security

System must be secured from all types of known attacks like SQL
injections, XSS. All loopholes will be detected and fixed while testing
phase.

3.3.2.3 Performance

System must load faster. System will have light-weight user interface
but rich with functions.

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 3.4 TimeLine Chart
Jul-11 Aug- Sep- Oct- Nov- Dec- Jan- Feb- Mar- Apr-
11 11 11 11 11 12 12 12 12

Problem

Definition

Requirement

Gathering

Planning

Analysis

Designing

M1: Coding

Testing

Integration with
System

M2: Coding

Testing

Integration with
System

M3: Coding

Testing

Integration with
System

M4: Coding

Testing

Integration with
System

M5: Coding

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Testing

Integration with
System

M6: Coding

Testing

Integration with
System

M7: Coding

Testing

Integration with
System

General
Testing

Documentation

Bug tracking
& fixing

Future
Extensions

M1: Core Module

M2: Forums

M3: Private Messaging

M4: Talks

M5: Chat

M6: Groups

M7: Events

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Remaining time will be spent on integrating modules and checking their integrity and
working on future extensions. During this time, we will also do the unit testing and
bug tracking. Also, modifications and error fixing will be done.

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Chapter 4: System Design

4.1 Class Diagram

Fig 4.1

13
4.2 Use Case Diagrams

Fig 4.2

14
Fig. 4.3

15
Fig.4.4

16
4.3 Sequence Diagrams

Fig. 4.5 Login

17
Fig. 4.6 Talk

18
Fig.4.7 Send PM

19
Fig. 4.8 Create Topic

20
Fig. 4.9 Group

21
Fig. 4.10 Add College

22
Fig. 4.11 Update Profile

23
4.4 Activity Diagrams

Fig. 4.12 Login

24
Fig. 4.13 Student Entry

25
Fig. 4.14 Add College

26
Fig. 4.15 Update Profile

27
Fig. 4.16 Create Group

28
Fig. 4.17 Create Topic

29
Fig.4.18 Talk

30
Fig. 4.19 Private Messaging

31
4.5 Dataflow Diagrams

Fig. 4.20 Context Level Dataflow Diagram

32
 4.21 Talk Process

4.22 addCollege Process

33
4.23 createForum Process

4.24 addUser Process

34