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Master Thesis Computer Science

Thesis No# MCS-2006:07 July 2006

Support for Information Management in

Virtual Organizations

By:

B.B. Pavan Kumar Yadav

Kosuri Naga Krishna Kalyan

Department of Interaction and System Design School of Engineering

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Box 520

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This thesis is submitted to the Department of Computer Science, School of Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science. The thesis is equivalent to 20 weeks of full time studies.

Authors E-mail Address

B.B.Pavan Kumar Yadav pavankumaryadav@gmail.com

Personal Number # 810419-P112

Kosuri Naga Krishna Kalyan kosuri.krishnakalyan@gmail.com

Personal Number # 801122- P911

University advisor: Email: rune.gustavsson@bth.se

Rune Gustavsson Phone: + 46 0708-341151

School of Engineering Fax: +46 455 385667

Department of Computer Science Blekinge Institute of Technology SE – 37225 Ronneby

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S

PECIAL

T

HANKS

T

O

First of all we would like to thank Rune Gustavsson our supervisor at BTH for giving us the opportunity to do this thesis work, and for the help with the insight in making of this thesis. Thank you Mr. Rune to provide us support in presenting our ideas clearly and for discussing with us when we got stuck there your enormous knowledge has helped us a lot.

We also thank Karin Jakobsson for helping us with scheduling meetings on time with our supervisor without which it would have been difficult for us to give this thesis a final shape in the stipulated time.

We also thank the fellow students at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola for giving us the support for forming a base of our thesis by taking their precious time in providing us the valuable feedback on the university. We would like to thank all our friends in Sweden as well as in India for suggesting us through different phase of our thesis.

Last but not the least we would like to thank our parents who have supported us at every stage with their blessings without them we couldn’t have made up till this position.

Thank you all, without your help this thesis wouldn’t have been possible to do!

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A

BSTRACT

Globalization and innovation are revolutionizing the higher education forcing to create new market trends. Different nations have their own pattern and framework of education in delivering the educational services. Educational institutions are also seeking different organizational and behavioural changes for their better future as they hunt for new financial resources, face new competition and seek greater prestige domestically and internationally. The coming future will decide which universities would survive the market trends, competition and expectations of the students (Clients). The survival-of-the-fittest paradigm framework plays a prominent role in ideas of how the higher education would be delivered to the students in future with the Instruction Technology and distance education. According to us the education trend has changed its phase of delivery of services form the management point of view to student’s point of view. Leading to delivery of educational service’s which would have more impact on student’s education, knowledge and experience within the institution. In our thesis we try to provide some information about how to support and manage the information in Virtual Organizations. We also explore the frameworks of the university and discussed a case study about the different ways of providing better support for information management resulting in delivery of best students driven services and unique facilities. We would be looking at the different aspects of the university work flows and procedures and gain an insight on the student’s expectation from the organization. This investigation would be helpful for the students to know what are the services they should expect from the universities and also helpful for management to know better the needs of the students and their needs and to develop a framework for proper execution of these services.

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S

TRUCTURE OF THE

D

OCUMENT

In Chapter 1 we have described the basic introduction about Grid computing and Virtual

Organization. Identifying and listing the process of creating a Virtual Organization. A brief introduction of Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) as organization and the problem statement motivating us to come up with a thesis work.

In Chapter 2 we have given a brief description about work flows also describing some of the

workflow with in the university from both student’s and management point of view.

Chapter 3 describes who is a stakeholder and what his role within an organization is. We

tried to list out the stakeholders for the selected workflows mentioned in chapter 2. In this chapter we have discussed the different implementing models with which the workflows are implemented and we also suggested some new technology (Web-Services and Semantic Web Applications) using which the workflows could be properly implemented for better service delivery. Also we have given an approach to implement the web services in the form of a “Remote laboratory setup” framework with which the students can do their experiments from any where in the world through internet.

Chapter 4 gives the explanation about Functional and Non-Functional Requirements with

emphasis on the Non-Functional requirements which we feel is the most important aspect for developing a system. We have classified the parameters of Non-Functional requirements and illustrated them in detail.

In Chapter 5 we have taken BTH as an example of a university and prepared a case study which includes the different issues which we have gathered after discussing with students about the issues they have faced within the university and what improvements they expect within the university by conducting one on one sessions and also getting the feedback from the questionnaire. The feedback questionnaire is shown in Appendix-A. We have then analyzed the different feedback given by the students. After analyzing have proposed a system which could be implemented for better students interaction with university. Also we have discussed about “Student Centric Services” which is the current trend utilised by most of the renowned universities.

Chapter 6 gives the conclusion of our thesis and the Future Work that could be performed

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T

ABLE OF

C

ONTENTS

Page No

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1) Setting up the Scene ………... 9

1.2) Background ………... 10

1.2.1) what is grid computing? What is its importance? ………... 10

1.2.2) what is VO? What is the required environment for VO? ... 10

Chapter 1.5 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND CHALLENGES

1.5) Problem Statement………... 12

1.5.1) Motivation for thesis ………... 12

1.5.2) Challenge or Research Questions ………. 12

1.5.3) Research methodology ……….. 12

1.5.4) Guidance to the readers ……… 14

1.6) Own contribution ……… 14

1.7) Other Approaches ………... 14

Chapter 2

WORK FLOWS

2.1) Introduction to Work-flows ……… 15

2.2) BTH Organisation Work-Flow Design ………... 17

2.2.1) Student Applying for Admission ………. 17

2.2.2) Service for International Students (Accommodation/Pickup Services) ………... 18

2.2.3) Student Course Registration ……… 19

Chapter 3 IMPLEMENTING SELECTED WORKFLOWS

3.1) Identification of Stake Holders ………... 21

3.1.1) who are stakeholders? ………... 21

3.1.2) what is the roles of stakeholders? ………. 21

3.2) Implementation Models ……….. 24

3.2.1) Data-Base model ………... 25

3.2.2) Client-Server Model ………... 25

3.2.3) Variant of Web Services ………... 26

3.3) Remote Laboratory Framework ……….. 31

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Page No

Chapter 4 NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

4.1) Introduction ………. 37

4.2) Challenges of Non-Functional Requirements ………. 38

4.3) Classification of Non-Functional Requirements ………... 38

4.3.1) Performance ……….. 39

4.3.2) Maintenance ……….. 39

4.3.3) Portability ………. 40

4.3.4) Scalability ………. 40

4.3.5) Security and Protection ………. 41

4.3.6) Information Ownership ………. 41

4.3.7) Infrastructure ownership ………... 42

4.4) Conclusion ……….. 42

Chapter 5 BTH a Case Study

5.1) BTH an organization ………... 44

5.2) Problems students facing with existing system ……….. 44

5.3) Proposed Information System (Dialogue Based) ………... 46

5.4) Student Centric Services ………. 48

5.4.1) Structure of this section ……… 48

5.4.2) what do we mean by student centric services? ………... 49

5.4.3) what’s the difference with the current applied framework? …... 49

5.4.4) Accelerating implementation of Student centric services? ... 50

5.4.5) Indicative results in achieving standard Student centric service? ……. 50

5.5) Students Expectation with BTH University ………... 50

Chapter 6 Conclusion & Future Work ………...

52

References ………. 54

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L

IST OF

F

IGURES

Fig 1) Support of work flow by services……….. 13

Fig 2) Student Applying for Admission………... 17

Fig 3) Student service for International Students (Accommodation/Pickup Services)………..……… 18

Fig 4) Student Course Registration ……….. 19

Fig 5) Identification of Stake Holders ………. 22

Fig 6) Client-Service Model ……… 26

Fig 7) Fundamental participants of Web Services ……….. 27

Fig 8) SOA Architecture………... 29

Fig 9) Interaction of Stakeholders with Web-Services………. 30

Fig 10) Prototype for Remote Laboratory……… 31

Fig 11) Remote Laboratory Framework………... 33

Fig 12) Classification of Non Functional Requirements……….. 39

Fig 13) Classical process of getting the information (Rule Based)……….. 47

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C

HAPTER

1.

INTRODUCTION

1.1) Setting up the Scene

In this thesis work we are trying to find the different means to develop an organization (especially Educational Institute) so that it would be prominent in providing the most suitable and best services for the students. In turn helps itself for growing its fame and name in the international market. We hope that this document would provide information for students as well as the management of the university about what are the services and what the students should expect from the university also the management should know how the services and information support should be delivered focusing on students requirements. At the end of the thesis the user would get to know the importance of the following:

1. Understanding Requirement Engineering 2. Understanding Technical Ramification 3. Understanding Validation

Let us first describe what the Requirement Engineering is about

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them and this leads to discovering/gathering the requirements. Requirements engineering is a term used to describe all the tasks that deals with the investigation, scope and definition of a new or altered computer system. It is the most important part in the business development. The requirements are identified by the business analyst or the developers and then those requirements are positioned to design a solution. There are set of activities in requirement engineering to produce reliable, high quality and trustworthy system.

Eliciting requirements: Identify system stake holders its goals and expectations

with clearly defined system boundaries.

Modelling or specifying requirements: Here focus will be on systematic

modelling of both functional and non functional requirements. Functional

requirements are specified by system processing states, events (input events,

output events, process execution signals) and system data. System data may include identification of data objects, data types, data sources, end-user screen displays, and meta-data, as well as construction of a data dictionary. Functional requirements should also specify system data flow through system or subsystem states as controlled or synchronized by events.

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Validating requirements: Here we assess feasibility of modelled system

solution, as well as to identify realizable and improbable system requirements. Next step would be to understand the different technical requirements that should be gathered for developing a system. At last how to understand the validation of the system.

1.2) Background

1.2.1) what is grid computing?

Grid computing can be defined as an environment which uses the geographically distributed computers connected through internet collectively for high performance computing and resource sharing. This involves computers from multiple organizations crossing organizational boundaries and enables the creation of distributed teams (called as VO- Virtual Organizations). The main goal of Grid computing is to facilitate the creation of virtual organizations, till date there is no much concentration and work done on the policies and mechanism about how the virtual organizations will operate. The criteria behind the creation of virtual organizations are collaborative delivery of specific product or service. These organizations are created by bringing the different aspects of services and facilities for achieving a single purpose.

1.2.2) what is Virtual Organization? What is the required environment for VO?

There is no single definition for the virtual organization for example [1] it is defined as a “dynamic collection of individuals and institutions which are required to share resources to achieve certain goals”. [2] Virtual Organization is the temporary network of companies, customers, suppliers or employees linked by information and communication technologies with a purpose of delivering a service or product.

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The process of creating Virtual Organisation:

• Identify common goals and objectives.

• Identify customers/clients and what are we going to do for them. • Identify the flow of work from beginning to end (Process)

• What systems/IT/services will you need to service the customer without acquiring people or buildings? (Systems)

• Identify performance measurement systems to ensure that service levels and profitability are maintained? (Metrics)

• Without the addition of people and buildings, how are we going to organise the Organisation.

Required Environment for virtual organisation

• Company goals that cannot be achieved without working together by a group of individuals, businesses or organisations.

• Person required leadership skills to bring the group together.

• A cluster coordinator -somebody who loves networking and is great at organisation and making things happen.

• IT systems that allow the individuals to share ideas and information • A budget to pay for meetings/IT infrastructure/marketing/performance

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C

HAPTER

1.5

P

ROBLEM

S

TATEMENT

A

ND

C

HALLENGES

1.5) Problem Statement

1.5.1) Motivation leading to thesis

Usually if we look the university in the organizational perspective then we could find that university is the service provider by means of the Staff/employees usually employed by university itself to deliver the services, and students are the service consumers/seekers. The main aim of the universities is to provide the better standard education with the maximum support from the staffs and administrative department easing the work of the students. Today’s technology and concern for delivering proper services is moulded in to such organizations without any proper gathering of student requirements this leads to development of a information system which is fully operational but which exists with improper work procedures and often increases the work pressure on the staff and management. This pressure is indirectly mounted over the students making a negative impact on the experience of the students at the university. So these drive our interest to find out how well the information management could be processed for providing a better support for a virtual organization.

1.5.2) Challenge (research question)

Our research drives us to find out what are the most important aspects of requirement engineering? Also what are the most important aspects of validation? From the context of student centric services

1.5.3) Research methodology

The thesis is an investigation research from the context of student services where we would discuss about the organization, find the generic workflows and framework within the organization and gather the requirements which are important from the student’s point of view and also analyze their feedback and understand the different aspects where the university lags and what is the best part of university. Trying to explore and discover the answer of making trust worthy environment for service delivery to the students.

The figure below describes the support of the workflow by means of services. As usual university has defined staff and student’ work flow. While considering some unclear tasks and responsibilities for the staffs leads to the failure of the defined workflows. These in-turn increases the amount of workflow that individual has to perform leading to increased pressure. This pressure is directly or indirectly levied on the students and resulting in system failure.

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Fig 1) Support of work flow by services

With the perpetual decline in subsidization the future of education would depend on alternatives and non-traditional methods of delivering its products. The reasons which are pressurising the most of the educational institute for the better standards and the virtualization some of them being:

9 The increase in the demand for larger infrastructures and growing number of enrolments force the educational organizations to implement distant education with the similar standards.

9 Students are striving for the courses which match their schedule and circumstances thus forcing the decline in the traditional learning. Students now a day are also looking at the future prospectus, benefits of pursuing the course with in a university either on-campus or through internet learning. Due to this service organizations are facing much higher competition with the rise in the non-traditional and alternative competitors, in maintaining their fame and standard of education. Other factors also affect the organizations some of them are:

9 Increase market demands and growing instability of available resources.

9 Market conditions are unpredictable.

9 Making the services offered more flexible and creative by maintaining the standards.

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1.5.4) Guidance to the Readers

In the chapter 2 we have described about the generic workflows within the university, Later in Chapter 3 we have selected some work flows and discovered who the stake holders for implementing those workflows and in detailed description of the implementation models. In

chapter 4 we have discussed the most important aspect of a system i.e., Non-Functional

Requirements and why they are important for any system development. Chapter 5 we have taken up a case study about Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) and we have investigated the different aspects of this university among the fellow students, trying to list out what are their expectations and what issues they have encountered. Later we have proposed a system which according to us would be one of the best possible ways to gain and improve the student’s appraisal. Also we have described what Student Centric Services are and listed out some of the services which could be implemented. The final Chapter 6 gives the conclusion of our thesis.

1.6) Own Contribution

Gathering all the information for performing our thesis was not an easy task as there is no literature, no references and no books available for us to refer for gathering information. We have discussed among ourselves and gathered most of the information about how to provide better support for the information management within any organization. We have investigated and provided a background for the platform implementation for the Student Centric Services which could be implemented in Blekinge Tekniska Högskola for producing better standard of the services and also design the proper means of delivering the services to the students. In this thesis we have also described two different systems, first we have provided the detailed framework of setting up a “Remote laboratory” for performing remote experiments. Second we have designed a workflow of a “dialogue driven approach” model which would be helpful for providing the service in a much better interaction with the students. These models could be further put in to development using some technologies described by us in this thesis.

1.7) Other Approaches

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C

HAPTER

2.

W

ORK

F

LOWS

2.1) Introduction to Work-flows

Work flows can be defined in different ways in general workflow is the tasks through a certain work process. (Or) Work flow is the graphical representation of certain flow of a process in order to take a decision or conclude any work. Specifically to say Workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure with details of how the tasks are structured, who performs the task, what is the order of them and their information of the synchronization. Some workflows are considered in the dimension of time.

In the context of information technology the workflow is a model to support the internal part of the working /process methods of the software or the documents. There are many more workflow paradigms which can be distinguished for scientific or business. Here they depend on the purpose for which they have been designed and implemented.

According to us the workflow for the educational service perspective can be defined as a process which has to be adopted and regularly updated by the university management or the students with which the needs and requirements of the students can be met for their better performance and reducing the work load from the university management and staff.

The main concern here would be to accumulate the expectations of the students in the form of feedback and then to monitor them and create a system which could deliver efficiently and effectively the service.

Our aim was to take the feedback of the registered students of the university about their experience of the process through which they have gone through and share their experience and expectations in order to create a better frame work by trying to find out flaws (if any) in the current approach of university towards student and vice versa.

Below we have mentioned the different scenarios of the work flows of some processes carried out by the university:

1) Student Applying for Admission 2) Student requesting for Information

3) Student service for International Students (Accommodation / Pickup Services)

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2.2) BTH Organisation Work-Flow Design 2.2.1) Student Applying for Admission

student fills up the application form submits the application with transcripts receives the automated application reference number B TH DA TA B A S E Admission Department receives the Application form

Approve / Reject? Approve Reject B TH DA TA BA S E Result sent to Admission department course coordinator receives application ok incomplete documents application verification ? Send the Rejected information to student

Post the Admission letter And university Information to

Student

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2.2.2) Student service for International Students (Accommodation / Pickup Services)

student

BTH NEW STUDENTS DATABASE

BTH DATABASE

Set reminder depending on the Importance of the request

Request answered

Request is processed and answered

yes

Save the session for monitoring the students requests

Request sent to the authorised person Requests / Sends

the Information to student services

Student receives the status of the request

NO All the information

are maintained and monitored for the better performance

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2.2.3)

S T U D E N T C O U R S E R E G IS T R AT IO N

student S tudent is rec eived and

enrolled in to univers ity

S tudent have to s elec t the individual

c ours es ac c ording to his c hoic e

C ours e details are updated in the univers ity databas e

S tudent s elec ts the c ours es

BT H C O U R S E R E G IS T R AT IO N S Y S T E M

C ours e res pons ible and s tudents get the regis tration

details s tudent gets the m ail

w ith the c ours e details (s c hedule,m aterial,A s s ignm ents )

P rofes s or tak es the res pons ibility to c hec k the s tudents approac h

tow ards s tudies and learning D etails and s tudents

perform anc e are doc um ented and updated in c entralized

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C

HAPTER

3.

I

MPLEMENTING

SELECTED WORK

-

FLOWS

3.1) Identification of Stake Holders

3.1.1) who are stakeholders?

There are lot of definition about a stake holder some of them are:

A stake holder could be any one a person, a group, a business unit, an institution, or organization that has a share or an interest in a particular sector or system or set of activities.

A stake holder could be any one with a common interest for a public / private sector organization for getting maximum benefits and achieve a goal.

For an educational institution like BTH we find that there are some of the stake holders who are working altogether to gain the maximum benefits and also achieve the mission of the university.

They are: 1. Students 2. Information Providers 3. Maintainer 4. Staff 5. System owners

6. Responsible person ( the supreme head)

We could say that a stake holder is a person, or department or organization who has an interest in a process in the form of an obligation or having a benefit or service.

3.1.2) what is the roles of stakeholders?

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STUDENT

IDENTIFICATION OF STAKE HOLDERS

Fig 5) Identification of Stake Holders

Information Provider:

Information providers are any one in the university who maintains the valid information for the students. Some of the these information providers are

(Actor, Role)

1) (Course coordinator, provides course information) 2) (Program responsible, provides program information) 3) (Librarian, provides literature information)

4) (Students administrator, provides all student service information and support)

5) (Administration dept, information regarding student’s admission) 6) (Students Expedition, answers student queries)

7) (International coordinator, information to the new students)

8) (Students union, takes care of students basic requirements for studies) 9) (Examination dept, provides the examination information and results)

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Maintainer:

For such a big organizational system there would be maintenance department in order to check and maintain the proper functionality of the infrastructure and the different facilities provided by the system.

We believe for all information which is to be provided should be maintained and delivered in a safe and secure channel/process and has to be delivered to the right person on request in order to maintain the transparency within the system.

All the above information providers require the information and resource maintainers who would maintain the information and deliver to them. There could be an either option of also being the information maintainer and also the information provider.

We believe that the course responsible is the head of the particular program say “Masters in technology” or “masters in Engineering”. They have to gather, organize, maintain, implement and deliver the information to every student and administration dept regarding the course structure.

The course structure is designed in such a way that the students gets the maximum knowledge by learning the subjects, this is decided by the head of the university (Rector/Dean) along with the course responsible we are not going to concentrate on how they decide and how they go for structuring the course. The prime responsibility of the maintainer is to maintain the proper information in a proper channel. No wrong information or pseudo information should be available for the concerned of the data.

Some of the lists of maintainers are:

1) (Course coordinator, maintains the course information on website)

2) (Program responsible, maintains the program schedule, slides and related info )

3) (Computer administration dept, maintains the student lab info) 4) (Librarian, maintains and updates the library catalogue )

5) (Students administration dept, maintains the students course record) 6) (Examination dept, maintains the exam data and results information)

System Owners:

This is the most important and crucial part of the system where one information provider or maintainer inputs any information in to the system or the website has to make sure that the information is valid information. This part of the system is left out unnoticed by the authorities of the university and they don’t take it seriously.

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So the concerned person who has inserted the course information or any valid information has to keep that information for a particular valid period of time. Say until the course results have been finalized and been published. So the very next thing for the responsible is to remove all the information provided at the site till the next time when the course is offered.

The owner ship of a particular work or process is very much important for better results. Every person who is uploading or updating the website information or any other information has to make sure that the information provided in the information sheets or data base are updated and correct, ultimately achieving best performance.

Responsible Head:

The head of the university is the responsible head of the system which is implemented and is also one of the stake holders because he/she is concerned about the development of the organization let it be a company or any public or private sector organization.

All the management decisions which are taken are approved by head of the institution. Without his/her concern no decision can be taken or altered. He is the supreme body of the system.

3.2)

Implementation Models

Implementing the services for the students can be classified in to three models they are (1) Database model (2) Client-Server model and (3) Variant of Web Services which are further classified in to (i) Web-Services (ii) Semantic Web. One of the major aspect what we as a students look in for in a university is the use of information resources and also getting the valuable information at the right time in a right precision.

The most common means of gathering information is through the fellow students, friends, course responsible, student’s information desk, students’ administration, course home pages and also the program responsible.

Though most of the resources through which the students gather information are unofficial. Most official process of getting the information is the course website. We would like to have the website in such a way that the students get the updated information right at their finger tips.

Technology:

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3.2.1) Data-Base model

First basic model could be either to develop a static website and then put in all the information in that but the technology and the market demands much more than that. The most general model could be thought about is the Data-Base model where the developer develops the service by inserting all the information in a database and then uploads/retrieves the information from the database when ever required. This seems to be much more static rather than dynamic.

A database model is a theory or specification describing how a database is structured and used. Common models include

• Hierarchical model • Network model • Relational model

[6] The Hierarchical Model, in which record types are linked in a treelike structure (e.g., employee records might be grouped under a record describing the departments in which employees work)

The Network Model, in which arbitrary linkages of record types may be created (e.g., employee records might be linked on one hand to employees' departments and on the other hand to their supervisors—that is, other employees)

The Relational Model, is one in which all data are represented in simple tabular form, with relations like one-to-one, one-to-many etc.

3.2.2) Client-Server Model

It’s very easy to say that “The client-server is the relation ship between two or more computers in which one program, the client makes the request to another program, the server which fulfils the request.” Its very general description, to implement the services in a client server model requires much more work than it seems to be, creating a client/server architecture which is scalable, robust, maintainable and effective system has proven to be a frustrating task for different large and medium scale organizations worldwide.

• Before building a client-server system is a clear prospective of the requirements of the organization and the people, precise understanding of the system and its requirements, working knowledge of the abstract architectures to define the structure for effective client-server systems, using the services model to design and verify the architecture.

• Having the in-depth analysis of the working strategies and proper

understanding of using the proven strategies along with the basic guidelines

for designing the scalable, fault-tolerant distributed system for providing better data integrity and security.

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Fig 6) Client-Service Model

3.2.3) V

ariant of Web Services Web Services

A web service is a software system designed to support the interoperable machine to machine interaction over the network (W3C definition). The

software applications which are developed in various programming languages and running on different platforms can use web service to exchange the data over the computer networks. [7] Web-services use the web to perform application-to-application integration

Information can be defined as “It is a term with many meanings depending on

context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus.”

It has become the most important and valuable criteria for major business organizations and many other industries. Businesses rely on technology to utilize the various types of information they depend on.

But there exists a true common problem, which is connecting the two different systems together. As various departments in an organization they want to share data but in a large organization the data formats are different which in-turn makes the sharing of data difficult and time-consuming and this different formats or platforms can complicate the things while developing the new interface.

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Using the web-services developers can develop set of the standard interfaces which can be added or implemented to the new or existing system using the simple Object Access Protocol and describe how to use the data using the WSDL (Web Services Description Language). By using these web services each department can access their data without any custom programming on application-by-application basis. Using web services Description Language WSDL business organizations can connect to partners and clients using the same services which are used internally.

Web services business model

One of the examples of a business model is the worlds leading web search company “Google”. It provides a public search engine that contains the index of more than 3 billion web pages. The business model which supports this search engine is advertising. Users can access the service for free in exchange of viewing a few ads and Google collects the revenues from the business that place the ads. Google provides a web service interface to the public search engine it is called the “Google Web APIs” which can be used to query the Google search engine from the applications itself. This will return the structured data that can be processed by the requesting application.

Implementing the Web Services Applications

[12] There are three fundamental participants in fully deployed web service architecture. They are service registry, service provider and service requester.

Service Registry

Fig 7) Fundamental participants of Web Services

The service provider implements a service and publishes that service for use. The service registry discovers the services dynamically based on specific criteria and ultimately invoked by a service requester. [12]

Before beginning to develop or implement a web services the developer has to decide if a Web service implementation benefits your business process.

When to perform the task?

Implementing web services applications is an easy way to integrate application systems together within or outside the organization infrastructure. Else the

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individual (different) systems would function as a standalone system without any internal coordination. For example, the student’s information database is a standalone application, but you want the Medical Aid application to be able to access the student’s data. Here we can create a web service for the student’s database and then enable the medical aid application as Web service client. Now the medical aid application can access the student’s information.

By implementing a web service these two applications can share the information an efficient way. The use of web services enables the option of adding new

application can be classified as follows: • Plan to use web services

ices

s.

[8] h mplements a Service-oriented architecture

OA). “A major focus of web services is to make functional building blocks

OA (Service Oriented rchitecture)

er: creates the web service

ervice Broker: It is responsible for making the access information of the

potential clients. It’s also called as

rovider to invoke one of its web services. in

innovative functions/ideas later on to the existing applications to address new opportunities and challenges.

Steps for using the web service

• Migrating the existing web services if available (optional) • Develop web services

• Configure the web services • Assemble the web serv • Deploy the web services • Secure the web services • Troubleshoot web service

T e Web services approach i (S

accessible over standard internet protocols (IP) that are independent from platforms and programming languages”. These services can be new

applications or deployed on the existing legacy system. There are one or more roles for the building blocks of S

A

Service provid S

service implementation and interface to the

service registry.

Service requestor: The client locates entries in the broker registry and then

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Fig 8) SOA Architecture

Many standards organizations and industry groups have undertaken development of web services specifications and implementation resources. Some of the available resources are formalized protocols and standards, architecture models, roadmaps, infrastructure blueprints, guidelines for application development, and implementation models, etc.

[10] Some of them are as follows:

1. JSSL Web Service Reference Architecture (WSRA)

2. OASIS Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) TC 3. Semantic Web Services Initiative (SWSI)

4. W3C Web Services Architecture Activity and Working Group 5. Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) [10] 6. Applications developed using XML,

7. Applications developed using Java / J2EE environment 8. Using Microsoft .Net frameworks

9. Using Web Sphere Server Application development

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Web Services- Advantages and Limitations:

Advantages: [11]

1. Interoperability: one web service of any type could interact with other web service of different type this is because of SOAP.

2. Ubiquity: Any device or System which supports HTTP and XML can host and access the web services.

3. Transparency: web services break applications in to specialized components. Like an authentication gateway can be shared by many applications.

Though there are lot of benefits of using the web services but there exists some limitations which require numerous improvements to make it more robust and stable. Some of the limitations are security, manageability, reliability, transaction handling capability. [11]

3.3) Remote Laboratory Framework

BTH can also provide a service “Remote Laboratory Experiments” where the students can remotely log in to their domains and then they can do their lab experiments from any place they are. This can be implemented using Web-Service; we will provide some assumptions for the implementation.

[13] Numerous online or remote laboratory experiments are being implemented for overcoming the traditional learning techniques. These systems are web based which allow the students to conduct their real lab experiments. “Cyber Lab” is the typical example of such systems.

This frame work can be treated as the collection of various experiments which can be performed online. Each experiment can share the resources of other experiment in the framework when not in use. Some of the resources provided by the framework would be user account information management, experiment status generation, calendar, reminder, discussion forum for Q&A session and live IM facility with the lab coordinator. The major limitations concerned with this model can be the security, controlling plagiarism and data confidentiality. Future work could be performed concerning these aspects

This remote framework will work on the following aspects. • Application Programming interface

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Application programming interface (API):

This API is the important aspect for the setup of remote labs. This API describes how the experiment and the outside control would communicate with each other in systematic manner and provides a proper structure to maintain and control the experiments. Finally it provides the structure how the students should work online and communicate with the system for performing the experiment. This API are developed using the web services for better interaction and efficient interoperability.

Queuing system for Students:

All the students who have enrolled in the course would be entitled to perform the remote lab experiments. So a proper schedule or timetable has to be maintained for the students to perform the experiments by utilizing all the available lab resources. This queuing system is based on first-come-first-serve basis, where every student are entitled to work any number of experiments but one student at a time for strictly allotted time period. So any students who want to perform the remote lab experiments should be enrolled in to the course and should book time for himself to run his experiments.

Multi user collaboration:

To make the remote laboratory experiments a very good experience of learning multi user activities should be allowed in the framework of the experiment so that no students would feel lonely while running the experiments. If student gets stuck with some experiment he could collaboratively try to solve the problem along with his colleague/partner and also with the help of online lab coordinator. Other students can also join the experiment session in order to view the status of the running experiment and learn every detail of their experiment. This would lead to a new era of learning experience.

Commands / Action Online Web Service API Action Control Client: User Browser Laboratory Experiment Test-Bed Status Report Experiment Status

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Advanced user Services:

he advanced services are implemented using the Web services and offered to

• Web Service with Java support: We use World Wide Web (WWW)

• Java applet: Java applet can be downloaded from the server to any

• Database: The system is password protected and allows access only to

• Firewall: To ensure security, we use a filtering mechanism based on the

• Text based online collaboration: it provides text based communication T

the students which are more helpful for the students who are performing the remote experiments. Such services are the online Q&A session where the laboratory coordinator is always online simultaneously monitoring the experiment status with the students, Instant Messaging (IM) facility with the coordinator and along with the other students who are monitoring the lab experiment. Reminder which is designed to automatically sends a message to all the registered students about their schedule for performing the experiment [13]. [20][21] For developing Remote Lab framework following modules are required to be considered.

service as our Single Point of Entry (SPOE), to provide universal access to users.

remote user on the authorized list. This applet provides graphical user interface of the lab. Students can begin to configure the equipment by login into their account and by simply clicking on the equipment.

authorized users. The authentication information is stored in the database. Student’s authentication is based on User Name, Password and Pre-assigned time slot.

information stored in the database. Once the user was authenticated, the user’s IP address is known. The IP filter uses this IP address to allow this user’s traffic into the system. After a certain time period when the user time slot expires, the IP filter will get an update from the database and block the user’s access to the system.

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Fig 11) Remote Laboratory Framework

Students should access the remote laboratory web pages through the browser during their assignment time slots. Student should first enter user name and password for authentication purpose. Once the student is authenticated the browser will display the web pages that include full features of a typical computer lab. There student can read the lab objectives, directions, and different online resources. After the student reads the necessary background information they can click on any button to start doing the lab from their own place. This will enable the student to remotely login into the Laboratory. After the students finish the lab, they can download the lab results for future analysis and manipulation. Each time a student is performing an operation on a specific device, the write access is prohibited for other members. Other students can only be viewed or they can do experiments on other equipment. The text -based collaboration tools, such as instant message, online chat and discussion forums, have been integrated into the lab website. So all group members can actively participate in solving the lab tasks, and benefit from the lab material.

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3.4) Semantic Web

The semantic web is a web of data. The every day life utilizes different type of data such as graphics, multimedia and photos also most of data which is not the part of the web. For example in every day use people would like to see the photographs on the web, check their appointments in the calendar, and checking the bank statements. As all applications are individual they maintain their integrity. It would be easy for the humans to interpret that but it would be very difficult for the machines to work together with this different application which in turn raises the need of a new technology.

[W3C] The semantic web is a mesh of information which would be easily

process able by machines it could be thought of as a globally linked database (efficient way of representing data on the WWW). It is a metadata based infrastructure which extends the current web (and doesn’t try to replace the existing technology). “The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about

common formats for interchange of data, where on the original Web we only had interchange of documents. Also it is about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.” [W3C]

Web is a general concept “one universal space of information”. The W3C is “World Wide Web Consortium”. They are the member organizations who work together to develop standards for the World Wide Web (WWW). W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication and collective understanding they develop interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) leading the Web to its full potential.

“A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal.”

For example the “WWW - World Wide Web” where there is lot of information about the books, food items, travelling, hotels, galleries, and pizza joints etc. If I would like to find a particular book with some specific concept or words then it is very difficult for me to get the search results on the web, so there is a need of

Metadata i.e. Information of Data.

[16]Properly defining, Metadata is structured data which describes the

characteristics of a resource. The term “Meta” is derived from the Greek word denoting a nature of the higher order or more fundamental kind. A metadata record consist a list of predefined elements representing the specific attributes of a resource bearing one or more than one values to an attribute.

Each metadata schema will usually have the following characteristics:

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• The meaning of each element. [16]

All the data needs of the web were combined together with the W3C group and were addressed by a group leading to development of a common framework called as the RDF “Resource Description Framework”.

[RDF – Concepts] RDF is a general purpose language for representing the

information on the web. It integrates a variety of applications from library catelogs and world-wide directories to aggregation of news, software and content to personal collections of music, photos and events using XML (Extensible Markup Language) as the interchange syntax. [RDF – Concepts]

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C

HAPTER

4.

N

ON

-

F

UNCTIONAL

R

EQUIREMENTS

4.1) Introduction

First of all we would like to discuss what the requirements and what is their impact on a particular system development. [22] Requirements can be said as the statements that indicate what the system needs to do in order to provide a capability, utility or benefit [22]. Usually the requirements are gathered before the actual life cycle implementation of project is started. In order to develop an efficient system the requirements should be gathered and analyzed in a proper way so that it could be implemented effectively. In the generalized process for developing an information system there are six steps they are as follows: Identifying requirements, Planning, Designing, Building Implementation and Maintenance.

• Identifying Requirements: Discover what is needed

• Planning: Perform the planning of gathering information about the tools, procedures, budget and resources required.

• Designing: Try to find out a solution for all the requirements • Building: Develop the solution

• Implementation: Implement/deploy the solution.

• Maintenance: To take care of the system after implementing the system. According to us the requirements are the most critical for the success of any system. There are two types of requirements they are Functional requirements and Non Functional requirements. We are not concerned about the functional requirements of the system but the non functional requirements which we feel should be prioritised first.

Functional requirements are focusing on the tasks to be performed. [23]They are

associated with specific functions, tasks or behaviours which the system should support [23].

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4.2) Challenges of Non Functional Requirements

[29]Challenges generally we face here are • Hard to model. • Often contradictory.

• Difficult to enforce during development.

• Difficult to evaluate for the customer prior to delivery. • Hard to make them measurable requirements. [29]

4.3) Classification of Non-Functional Requirements

Some of the non-functional requirements we are going to consider for this system are as follows

• Performance • Maintenance • Portability • Scalability

• Protection and Security • Information Ownership • Infrastructure Ownership

[24] These non functional requirements play very crucial role during the system development, every requirement should be properly analyzed and handled as it would be very difficult in order to correct the mistakes once the information system is developed [24].According to Alford, “In nearly every software project which fails to meet performance and cost goals, requirements inadequacies play a major and expensive role in project failure”(Alford 1979).

Example: Let us take an example why the non-functional requirements are much more important than the functional requirements. We took car as a system to be developed, before the evolution of the car the manufacturers were having certain list of requirements which people said like: If I drive the vehicle I want to know how speed I am travelling, this became the need for developing a speedometer. Same as that people wanted to drive while it is raining also during night times, this lead to the development of wipers and head lights. So these requirements are non functional requirements which have very much importance for the system development and have to be seriously considered for the system to be a success.

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Non Functional Requirements

Performance Maintenance Portability

Protection & Security Information Ownership

Scalability

Infra Structure Ownership

Fig12) Classification of Non Functional Requirements

4.3.1) Performance

According to human/customer point of view a system performance would be how well does the system respond to their issues, the system throughput / response time. Here intention is to find out how useful a system implemented with the open-end-arguments as a design guidelines [25] [26].

So as we have suggested to setup a remote laboratory experiment using which the students can perform their experiment through the internet rather than being present at the laboratory. In that setup normally students would want to know their result as soon as possible, and if at all there is an error in the experiment then how well would be the system response to them. What other options would be available with the students to perform the experiment successfully without any errors or malfunctions. These requirements of the students are directly proportional to the performance of the system. So the system should be developed considering these different issues with the remote laboratory experiments.

4.3.2) Maintenance

Who is responsible for what action within the organization?

Maintenance is one of the major aspects of the system development; the system should be so robust so that any one could maintain it properly without any hassles. We have mentioned some of the stake holders who are important part of this organization; some of the stake holders would be responsible for maintenance of this system.

Taking university as an organization the stake holders hold their responsible tasks for the maintenance. We would list some of the responsibilities of stake holders.

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over the responsibility to maintain the student’s requests, queries, and issues.

2) For Information maintenance, the group of staff who are stake holders known as “System Owner and System Maintainer” both of them are responsible in order to maintain the information within the organization. There should be clearly defined rules and policies as of what information should be shared among the students and which information should be kept confidential from the students. Any loss of information and any change in the information the responsibility lie on both of these groups of stakeholders.

3) Remote laboratory maintenance should be taken care by the “Lab coordinator or System maintainer” they are responsible for proper execution, scheduling, and maintaining the laboratory experiments among the registered students. Any loss or damage of the equipment and important information should be bared by these stake holders.

NOTE: The stake holders which we are mentioning above could be a single

person/staff or group of people working together under one department.

4.3.3) Portability

Portability is a measure of system independence; it can be defined as the ability of an implementation to be transferred from one environment to another. It is very hard to quantify because it is hard to predict what changes would be required in the system in future. But according to us clear defined policies and information about roles and responsibilities which are distributed through a proper channel to every stake holder, department, staffs and students would be very useful for any changes within the system.

Looking at the system from external point of view, today’s market trend is very unstable and there are lot of changes within this educational industry, so how stable is the system for the susceptible changes from the market point of view. We believe if the inner system of the organization is portable with any kind of changes then the overall system performance would be remarkable.

4.3.4) Scalability

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4.3.5) Security and Protection

[27] Security is a very important aspect of a system. It is important to develop systems where security is considered at all stages of design and implementation patterns, which not only satisfy the system functional specification but also satisfy security and other non functional requirements [27]. [28] Security risks are characterised by two factors: business impact and likelihood of a successful attack. The type of attacker, the frequency of attack, the degree of access to a system and its information and the availability of vulnerability which can be exploited determines the likelihood of attack. These issues are normally taken in to consideration during the final stages of the system development and implementation [28]. In this organization we strongly believe that every stakeholder is responsible for certain tasks and responsibilities. There is certain part of information which is been transferred or passed through the department so it is the responsibility of stakeholder to transform that information in secure manner. System Owner owns the information which is been utilised by the different staffs and stakeholders in this Information system design. It is his prime responsibility to make the system secure and fully protected against any harm.

4.3.6) Information Ownership

Information here is referred to the official events, information provided in university website and course website, information about courses, examination result, Information about books, and students information etc. Information could be much more than what we have listed, but the main question would be who owns all those information at BTH University? Is it one single person or group of persons? As information is distributed among different divisions of the university maintaining and taking the responsibility of the information would become more difficult task for the system developers.

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4.3.7) Infrastructure ownership

Infrastructure is the services and facilities that support day to day activity within the organization. Infrastructure includes student, buildings, computers, classes, Laboratory or test facilities, water supply system, and electricity distribution system etc.

At BTH we have found that there is no common body/department who owns the students and who could stand responsible for students and their actions. For this the management should elect group of stake holders who could manage and maintain the infrastructure of their organization.

4.4) Conclusion

These non-functional requirements would lead to better functionality through monitoring and measuring the requirements and performance of the system. We haven’t discussed any functional requirements because it can be taken care and planned properly before implementing the system. According to us the functional and non-functional requirements should be combined and both of these requirements should represent the system holistically. We term this kind of system as a ‘Holistic system’. This system could be developed by proper consideration of the requirements leading to a system with better HCI- Human Computer Interface. Therefore, having overall system view towards development and implementation of any kind of system would be the perfect procedure.

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C

HAPTER

5.

BTH

A

C

ASE

S

TUDY

5.1) BTH an organization

Blekinge Institute of Technology is the most distinct profile university with the primary focus on Applied IT and Sustainable Development of Industry and Society. It is also a broad-based university with the profile of teaching Business administration, social sciences, humanities and health sciences which are all influenced by the applied IT. BTH has three campuses in Karlskrona, Ronneby and Karlshamn with state of technology infrastructure which enriches the student’s life. There are number of programme

s which are being implemented through internet also known as the Internet-based programmes maintaining high standard of education. Studying at BTH is much more exciting and rewarding.

Our vice chancellor is Mr. Lars Haikola, he is been working with BTH since 2001 he is successfully able to contribute his role as a researcher, teacher and vice-chancellor. The mission of BTH is to “lead nationally in the profile

areas”. This university is growing at a good pace with maintaining the standards

of education with currently 15 MSc programmes, currently there are 6100 students studying and 3130 being the full-time students.

For a better grid infrastructure the virtual organizations connected to a grid should be adequate in delivering and implementing better services, should have proper coordination of work and processes of those services, should generate more trustworthy environment and last but not the least should have better support for the services within the organization. Here services could be meant by any performance, resources, solution and support.

5.2) Problems students facing with existing system

Most of the International students who are coming from far places they expect homely environment being away from their own home. They have more expectations with the university that they provide the information to them on time without them running from pole to post for gathering valid information Firstly every international student experiences the major drawback is the communication language “Swedish” which they don’t have proficiency or basic skills, in order to communicate with some departments or concerned person. They in turn expect that the information provided in the university should be in English which is an international language and would be easy for either party to communicate with each other. We expect that the university should follow the basic communication approach between the authorities and the students to be the international language English.

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approach to the association to try solving their issues. Indian students expect an establishment of “Indian Student Association (ISA)”; Pakistan students expect to have “Pakistan Students Association (PSA)”. We expect that university should encourage the students to form their association and university should extend their support to such associations. These associations would decrease the work overhead from the management of the university and would be helpful to manage most of the work within themselves.

And furthermore Sweden is a country where the identity of the student or the person is most important and students feel that the identity they have is of no much importance as they go every where they have to carry their Passport for their photo identification and they are not left with any other alternative. This has implemented lot of limitations for the international students. We expect that the university should look forward and should provide the perfect photo identification card, such as (Swedish Identity Card) for the students in a secure way.

5.2.1) Services Students would like to have for their educational benefits

Student Educational benefits are their support that the university extends for their work and studies. Like Course WebPages, Lab access, Library access, student expedition, feedback on their queries and considerable support for their educational issues

5.2.2) Services Students feel that are not been met their expectations

i) Communication being the major concern of the all, students request that all information from the university should be provided in English.

ii) Increasing number of students make it difficult for even concentrating in the class lectures decreasing the standard of the provided education.

iii) Students have to wait for long times at the student expedition for consulting their concerns.

iv) Insufficient Reference books in the library for the course which they take up (very hard to even find one reference book per 10 students)

v) Insufficient silent rooms for the students for their personal studies.

vi) Available profile space in the network to save the study work is very small. vii) Students find difficult to find their names in the registered students for

examination even though they have been registered.

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5.3) Proposed Information System (Dialogue Based)

We would like to discuss in detail about the course website IDENET the web page link is as follows “https://idenet.bth.se/servlet/index”. Students log in to this webpage in order to search / look at the course details.

We could find lot of feedback from the students that ƒ The webpage is not user friendly.

ƒ The maintenance of the webpage is not proper.

ƒ The search options for the courses they are looking for are very less this makes the webpage more difficult for daily use.

According to us this webpage has been developed using the “Rule based framework” where the students should have some pre knowledge and information to use the webpage. Like the students should know the course code (DVD010), because without the code the search returns many outputs most of them being irrelevant.

Students feel difficult to always remember the course code.

Students find more than once schedule and course listed once they reach the course listing. It could be said that it’s the mere negligence of either the Course responsible who adds the course details or the administrator who manages the course.

We feel the first and foremost design of the webpage should be so that when the course responsible adds the course in the IDENET then it should be maintained until the course is active. Once the course has been finished and the course result has been updated then it should automatically be removed from the webpage, reducing the confusion in the students mind and in turn reducing the overhead of the course responsible.

According to us and the feedback of some of the students they want to use a system which is dialog based not a static system but a dynamic system just as similar to human interaction (dialog based) the system which could respond to their dynamic answers and help them in getting the right information.

The scenario we would discuss is as follows.

References

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