The School of Computing accepts student applications from different parts of the world. Currently, there is no means for applicants to get updates on the progress of their application processing

School of Computing

Schedule and Deliverables

Notes and Advice

●  The Extenuating Circumstances procedure is there to support you if you have had any circumstances (problems) that have been serious or significant enough to prevent you from attending, completing or submitting an assessment on time. If you complete an Extenuating Circumstances Form (ECF) for this assessment, it is important that you use the correct module code, item number and deadline (not the late deadline) given above.

●  ASDAC are available to any students who disclose a disability or require additional support for their academic studies with a good set of resources on the ASDAC moodle site

●   The University takes any form of academic misconduct (such as plagiarism or cheating) seriously, so please make sure your work is your own. Please ensure you adhere to our Code of Student Behaviour and watch the video on Plagiarism.

●  Any material included in your coursework should be TECFAC 08 Plagiarism fully cited and referenced in APA 7 format. Detailed advice on referencing is available from the library .

●  Any material submitted that does not meet format or submission guidelines, or falls outside of the submission deadline could be subject to a cap on your overall result or disqualification entirely.

●  If you need additional assistance, you can ask your personal tutor, student engagement officer  academic tutor or your lecturers.

●   If you are concerned about your mental well-being, please contact our Well-being service

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INSTRUCTIONS 

This coursework contributes 40% to your overall module mark.

The coursework will be assessed by means of a formal report. The report must have a cover page. This is a group work.

The completed report must be submitted online. Late submissions will attract the standard academic penalty. The assignment also has scheduled formative assessments. The breakdown of the marks and the assessment criteria are provided in this document.

All coursework will be checked for possible plagiarism. The report must be appropriately referenced and contributions from anybody other than the student submitting the work must be acknowledged.

The implementation must be operating system or platform independent. All work submitted for assessment must be running on the University of Portsmouth system on the specified servers. Programs not running on the University of Portsmouth server(s) or submitted on disc or any media will not be assessed and will be considered as a non-submission.

Students Application Portal System

 The School of Computing accepts student applications from different parts of the world. Currently, there is no means for applicants to get updates on the progress of their application processing. You have been asked to design a web-based application processing tracking system which will allow applicants to be able to log into the system and see what is happening with their applications.

The designed system should allow an applicant to register, select a course, complete an application form, upload documents and submit the application. Applicants who have already submitted application forms should be able to log into the online application portal, view their complete application processing history from submission. This should include which University admissions team or individual that has taken any action or made a decision in connection with the application right up to the current status of the application. For all members of staff who process applications, the system must provide a field for authorised staff to enter status information (one which can be seen by the applicant when s/he logs in and one which can only be viewed by authorised staff). Each eligible member of staff should be able to e- mail an applicant from the designed interface without having to open a separate e-mail client. The system must be able to produce a list of applicants grouped by course, level, application status, year in which the applicant wants to start studies, etc.

In this coursework you are required to design the system, which can be implemented later on. You will assume that your role is to design the system providing all necessary specification that will guide a programmer to write the code. Additional information is provided in Section 2.3.

1.1  Requirements

This coursework requires a high level specification of the system. You are required to analyse the system and

1.identify all groups of users;

2. identify all functions that each group of users will be able to perform on the system;

3.list all information/material that the system will hold and their attributes e.g. a certificate has at least the following attributes: title of course studied, grade achieved, year that it was issued, name of institution, state and country where it was issued, duration of studies, etc.; and

4. using an appropriate format, draw flow diagrams to show the sequence of interactions between the users and the system. This should be done for at least 2 functions for each user group.

Although you are not supposed to implement the system at this stage, implementation consideration may be taken into account when specifying your system.

 Instructions and Guidelines on Assessment 

Important considerations for web accessible systems include: maintenance and management;

•      hosting (how easy is it to find a company to host your web site and how much does it cost?);

•      portability;

•      upgrading;

•      security

2.1   Assessment

This coursework will be assessed by means of a formal report and in class monitoring. The coursework marks are distributed, w.r.t. network design requirement analysis only, as follows:

1.    Identification of user groups and functions for each user group (user requirements)

2.    Identification of information that the system hold and their attributes:

3.    Information flow diagrams:

4.    Overall quality of the report (format, introduction, etc.)

Note that if a report is not submitted, the student will be considered not to have submitted any coursework.

2.2    Report Guidelines

•      Table of contents

•  An introduction that puts the project into context and a short referenced literature review (use Havard APA Referencing standard http://referencing.port.ac.uk).

•      The report must include user requirements analysis, and design objectives and justify all the decisions made.

•    Information flow diagram (IFD), use case, web flow diagram, or some other representation of the flow of data between the tasks and the system should be provided. The IFD format is described below. This includes a step-by-step description of the program(s).

2.3  Useful Information

You may find the following information useful:

1.     Use the list of courses available on the School of Computing website (http://www.port.ac.uk/school-of-computing/courses/) to set your list of selectable courses.

2.     Documents required as part of an application for an undergraduate course include:

·       Certificate(s)

·       1 reference letter

·       Transcript (if required)

3.     Documents required as part of an application for a postgraduate course include:

·       Undergraduate (BSc/BEng) degree certificate

·       Undergraduate degree transcript.

·       2 reference letters

·       English Language certificate

4.     Assume that when applications are received, they are processed by the admissions team in the following order:

a)     Application Checking Officer: checks the application to ensure that it has been fully completed and all documents have been submitted. If any document is missing, the Application Checking Officer(s) contacts the applicant to ask for the document. If there is only one reference missing, the application will still be progressed for processing but the offer will be conditioned on the other reference being submitted.

b)     Admissions Officer: checks whether the subjects studied are relevant for consideration for admission. If the subject(s) studied is not suitable for admission to the course the applicant has selected or the course is not being offered, the Admission Officer can reject the application or contact the applicant to ask whether he should be considered for a different course. The School of Computing accepts student applications from different parts of the world. Currently, there is no means for applicants to get updates on the progress of their application processing.

c)     Admissions Tutor: considers the application and makes the admission decision. After the Admissions Tutor’s decision, the Admissions Officer generates the recommended offer or rejects, it if that was the recommendation.

Please note that if the offer is “conditional” when the applicant meets the condition, the Admissions Tutor does not need to process the application again. The Admissions Office can just issue a new offer.

5.     Please note that when applications are being displayed to staff, they should be organised according to whether it is waiting for a decision from the Application Checking Officer, Admissions Officer, or Admissions Tutor, the offer has been issued (conditional and unconditional offers have to be displayed separately) or waiting for information from the applicant.

6.     Please note that there is likely going to be more than one member of staff who occupies any of the positions above. In addition, there are staff who may not be able to make admission decisions but can access the system to monitor the admission processes.

If you are not clear about any point, ask the lecturer or ask questions during the laboratory sessions.

Appendix

Details of Information Flow Diagram (IFD)

In describing this type of diagram, we use the university database example (see Fig. 1). The IFD describes, at a high-level, the following aspects of your system:

1. Documents: any data relevant to your application (could be internal or external to your system). In IFD, documents are represented as rectangles.

•      Internal documents represent data that is to be stored in the system itself (e.g., student records, enrollment records, etc.).

•      External documents represent data that is either (1) input by users or (2) generated

dynamically by the system (e.g. login and password selected by a user, a user’s transcript).

2.    Tasks: any action the system performs (represented in the circles).

3. System boundary: this is represented as a rectangle. All external aspects of the system (external documents) lay outside the rectangle and all internal aspects (internal documents, as well as tasks) lay inside.