Design and Implementation of a Social Media-based Web Application for Prospective University Students (a Case Study of Covenant University)
Chapter One
AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
To develop a web/online platform where students can share different questions or views on
various topics and majorly make information about any institution accessible. This will be
achieved through the following objectives:
1. Gathering the right requirements for this application.
2. Modeling the requirements gathered using a Unified Modeling Language (UML).
3. Implementing the system by creating a user-friendly platform that will be easier for these students to interact with each other and ask questions using threads and topics.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA CONCEPT
Social media is a form of electronic communication which facilitates interaction based on certain interests and characteristics. Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social dialogues (Idakwo, 2011). A social media network platform is one that provides a medium for interaction by groups of people making it easy to share information (such as lecture materials, pictures and ideas) across a circle of people
or groups. Statistics has shown that the use of social network such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is on the increase most especially among young individuals, the crop of which are students of tertiary institutions (Ikhu-Omoregbe, et al., 2012).
History of the Social Media
According to Idakwo (2011), The Social media started as a concept many years ago but has evolved into sophisticated technology. The concept of social media can be dated back to the use of the analog telephone for social interaction. The most recognizable use of social media was through innovative application, an online dialogue framework, created by Ward Christensen, a former IBM employee and Randy Suess. Initially, they envisioned a place where they could immediately contact their co-employees for announcements, i.e. meetings, reports, and other affairs, rather than making multiple phone calls, distributing memos, and the like. They were looking into creating a computerized bulletin board, which is why they named the program CBBS (Computerized Bulletin Board System). Soon enough, more and more employees contributed their ideas and comments in the said online community. That event was a
momentous episode in the history of computer and internet. It was the birth of online social networking.
The CBBS platform was made known to other companies and has been used for specific purposes. The Bulletin Board System expanded largely and began breaking into the mainstream much sooner than it was planned to. It was during the rise of the Internet Service Providers in the early 1990s when social networking sites began to flourish. Along with the availability of internet service to people, many people rummaged to have themselves acquainted with this new technology. With the fast response of people to the budding internet community, the bulletin
boards which were usually used by companies have started to expand their roles by offering their service to more people around the globe. More and more people joined the online community with the innate goal of creating an identity in this space and at the same time exploring the vast place that is the internet. Because of this, many internet-savvy companies gave what people wanted- getting to know more people and sharing common interests and points of view; that is through websites where they can socialize, websites which are now referred to as social
networking sites. Social media attained a great measure of success with the launch of the then very popular friendster.com. Creator of Friendster, Jonathan Abrams concocted a perfect mix of popular features from earlier social networking predecessors. Friendster became an instant success and gathered about three million members who signed up in its early months of launch. As years passed, Friendster reached an overwhelming hundred million users from all over the globe. With much demand from its users, Friendster unfortunately got out of hand and suffered from too many glitches in the server. Today, Friendster has been announced as a newly owned entity of a Malaysian Company, and outshone by present social networking sites but still remains to be patronized most especially in Asia.m The conception of myspace.com opened the internet users to vast opportunities of selfexpression which include wide control over a user’s profile content. Practically different people from all walks of life have dedicated pages in MySpace. In MySpace, users experienced the best of creating unique identities to show to the online world. MySpace remained as the uncontested favorite among all the social networking sites until 2005
when it met its future competitor in the market. Soon enough, MySpace created additional features like mobile applications in order to keep up with the latest trends in the online community; and at the same time be at par with the growing popularity of contemporary social networking sites, more specifically the next thing in line.
Facebook started as a local social network made for the students of Harvard. It was developed by a sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook was actually made by hacking Harvard’s database containing identification images of students. The initial idea was actually to compare the faces of students with images of animals, for entertainment purposes. However, due to the potentially damaging contents of the site, the creators decided to put it down before it caught the attention of school authorities.
The application was shut down, but the idea of creating an online community of students came to existence. The platform was then improved and sooner than they expected, Facebook was released in campuses other than Harvard. Thereafter, high schools were already starting to get\ attracted to the idea of having online communities, thus opening the website to the younger population. In 2006, facebook.com ultimately offered the opportunity to the rest of the world. As 2007 approached, the registrants reached an overwhelming digit-roughly a million dozen.
Facebook has grown to become the biggest and most popular social networking site today with a population of above 500 million active users.
CHAPTER THREE
REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the requirements for StudentHub were gathered by observing the existing systems and their operations. This chapter also provides details on the analysis and design of the proposed web application. It describes the methodology and design that will be used in modeling the application with the necessary Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams that will be used to analyze the architecture of this system like use case diagrams, activity diagrams and sequence diagrams. Proposed System
StudentHub is an online forum built basically for prospective students as a platform where their questions about institutions can be aired and other discussion can be made. StudentHub takes advantage of the usefulness of an online forum in the university environment, to provide the best solution to various problems like selecting their careers, choosing their courses of study and indecisions about how to apply to any institution of their choice (Covenant University will be used as our case study).
The benefits of this web application include: easy access to information, streamlined interaction between students, fostering social interactions, no loss of relevant information, security & access form anywhere. It is flexible and requires nothing more than a computer system with access to the web. StudentHub proposes to allow prospective students get answers to their questions from fellow university students and start up any discussion with them. StudentHub provides users (mostly guest users) with the following features: Discussion Forums: This is the main and most operational part of StudentHub. It also has some sections like Latest Discussions on the Home Page. Users; students or prospective studentsm (guest users) have the opportunity to participate in discussions. Only guest users are allowed to post questions/topics of their choice. News Section: This section creates an opportunity for guest users to have a feel and knowledge about events, seminars, conferences, etc. that are going on in Covenant University.
Moderator’s News: This section is aligned with the Latest Discussions on the Home Page. It is where Moderators have the opportunity to make their own suggestions/opinions, answers to questions and messages to any user (whether guest or student user) and news.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS AND ANALYSIS
Software Architecture of StudentHub The software architecture of this web application which represents its software (logical) implementation and deployment processes. This software architecture comprises of three (3)
main layers under the server-side logic and one separate Layer: Presentation, Business and Data Layers and the cross-cutting concerns. Figure IV below gives a well descriptive representation of
StudentHub:
CHAPTER FOUR
SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we discuss the implementation of StudentHub. Implementation is the realization of an application by following through several execution phases of planning, modelling, designand analysis. After a thorough process of system analysis, system design and an exhaustive requirement specification, the system was now implemented using appropriate tools. This chapter provides an overview on the choice of platform, tools and programming languages,
software and hardware requirements, and the different modules and interfaces that were implemented.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION
This chapter gives a summary of this work. A number of recommendations for future works inn this area were made and consequently the conclusion.
SUMMARY
The research work investigated and identified the relevant additional requirements that can be catered for in the design and development of an online forum. Through this study, we have been able to:
1. Explore relevant literatures and existing systems to discover the right requirements to be considered in the development of this application.
2. Model some of the operations of StudentHub employing object oriented analysis and design using UML diagrams
3. Develop an effective online forum for prospective students, where they can share different questions or views on various topics and majorly make relevant information about that institution accessible.
RECOMMENDATIONS AND FURTHER WORKS
Although online forums are significant tools for interaction, the integration of other popular social networks to make it accessible to everyone can be a big plus to this work. Also, most students are able to relate with Q&A’s more, so they can get any information they want easily.
The participation of the institution involved will also be an advantage because they will be able to relate with these issues and problems raised by the prospective students to improve some of their operations.
On recommendations, the social media is a very flexible scene, where improvements are inevitable. More improvements will be done on StudentHub by integrating third-party tools like SMS services to connect to their mobile devices, etc. Further work should also be carried out on properly evaluating and testing out the web application.
CONCLUSION
As the social media grows, online forums like StudentHub will be relevant to students and youths around the world. Even as other versions will be later developed, the activities and features on the site will increase because they will be built to meet the end-users requirements. Online forums have presented students with systems designed for the discussion of topics, with each topic separated into its own area, called a thread. A thread is begun by a user writing a short document, called a post, which introduces the topic or asks a question about the topic (Liu, et al.,
2010).
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