project increment 1

Project Title: Course Buddy

Team Members:

Vamsi Krishna Challa

Shankar Pentyala

Girish Kumar Reddy Nagella

1. Introduction:

Course buddy is an interactive application which acts as lifeline between students and the teaching fraternity.Student fraternity has a tendency to work along deadlines and many of the times, they tend to forget the deadlines and lose marks even having competency to complete on time. Not only deadlines, many of the student fraternity has a feeling of introvert of not being able to directly interact with the teaching fraternity.

Our COURSE BUDDY application tries to lessen the gap between teaching and student streams and also provide an interface for free flow of communication. Giving it a social media touch, would easily attract the students to make use of it.

Many times we face difficulty in finding out means to talk to our teaching faculty because of lack of availability of information. Myself, I am example how a student face difficulty in reaching faculty to break many barriers regarding the subject. As an international student, I was very much astonished at the etiquette of the college and I pulled myself backward from making a step ahead to clear my doubts regarding subjects. In the initial days, I was not able to find means of communication to reach out the faculty to be able to clarify my doubts regarding the subject and course curriculum.

So goes a saying, “Failure is the stepping stone of success.” As a blind follower of that, we tried to utilize this project opportunity to build an interface that would address the problems faced by us.

2. Project Goal and Objectives:

2.1. Overall goal:

Our goal is to develop a application “COURSE BUDDY” which is an interface between students and faculty. This interface is made using android software development kit and various other services which are needed for smooth running of applications.

2.2. Specific objectives:

Course buddy is used purely for educational purpose. Students login into the application to be able to talk with tutors, teaching assistants and also their course buddies without compromising their privacy.

2.3. Specific Features:

a.) Not compromising student’s privacy:

Many doubts of students can actually be solved by talking with their friends. But in an international institution we may not be able to easily mingle with students. Our course buddy would create a discussion forum without disclosing student’s identity and it would facilitate the student to clarify their doubts easily.

b.) Talk with tutors and teaching assistants on a single platform:

Instead of using mail based communication to reach out to professors and using mail based or spreadsheet based communication to reach out to teaching assistants, this interface provides a unique platform to reach out both of them at a single click.

2.4. Significance:

This application in creating an healthy environment where learning evolves from different aspiring minds and would help each other to excel themselves by taking help of their professors, teaching assistants and their friends.

3. Project Plan:

   3.1. Schedule for different Increments:

3.2. Project timelines, Members and responsibilities:  Below are the issues that were created under each increment.  These tasks are assigned to team members.  Once the respective task is accomplished, the issue is moved to closed state.

3.3. Burndown chart:

4. First Increment Report:

In this increment we have designed UI mockups by designing wireframes and by keeping them in mind, we have designed login pages, course selection page and choosing the option to talk with anyone of the professors or teaching assistants or course buddies.

4.1. Existing services / REST API:

  In this current increment we have not used any of the api’s. In the future increments if we need any of them for enhancement of our app , we’ll email and chat api’s.

4.2. Detail design of features:

  4.2.1 Wireframes:

Login page: after user opens the application, one would be asked to enter the credentials to enter into the application.

The user should have already be registered i.e., the details of the user must be already available with us as it is related to university and the details of student would be uploaded on a pre hand for authentication.

This wire frame comes once the login is successful. In this wire-frame we will be able to see the options to choose the courses In which we have enrolled.

Upon selecting the subject, we would get the option to talk with one of the required persons which we are needed to talk to like:

1. Professor

2. Teaching assistants

3. Course buddies.

This is the wireframe for choosing the option to talk or else log off from the application.

4.2.2 User Stories:

Class diagram:

Software architecture diagram:

Sequence diagram:

4.3. Implementation:

Home page for application:

if we try to log in without entering username, we'll be barred from logging in and will be asked to enter credentials.

if we enter invalid credentials, we'll be prompted to re-enter credentials:

On successful login, we would get the option to choose the course:

On selecting the course we would get an option to talk with anyone:

4.4. Deployment:

• We have deployed our application on avd emulator and have taken screenshots.

• We have explained about implementation in detailed in the above sections.

4.5. Project Management:

Technologies used: Android SDK, JAVA SDK.

Software used: Android studio.

In this increment we have completed the following work:

1. UML DIAGRAMS
2. Created increments in ZenHub
3. Created wireframes.
4. Sign In and registration form for android application

Contributions:

Vamsi Krishna Challa: 33.33%

Shankar Pentyala: 33.33%

Girish Kumar Reddy Nagella: 33.33%

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