assignment of realworld projects an economical method of building applications for a university and an effective way to enhance education of the stude

1、 Journal of Information Technology EducationVolume 2, 2003Assignment of Real-World Projects: An EconomicalMethod of Building Applications for a University andan Effective Way to Enhance Education of the StudentsMa. Sheila A. Magboo and Vincent Peter C. MagbooUniversity of the Philippines Manila, Man

2、ila, Philippinessheilaabadyahoo.co m nelyndronvasia.co mExecutive SummaryThis paper is about the strategy used by the Department of Physical Sciences and Mathematics (DPSM)in the integration of real-world projects in the implementation of its software engineering subject, a jun-ior subject in the BS

3、 Computer Science program. The strategy involves collaboration between the dif-ferent health professional colleges in the University that will provide the information requirements andDPSM that will provide the necessary training and supervision during project development. This schemehas been quite e

4、ffective in most situations since the students were able to produce good quality outputsin just a short span of time and at minimum cost to the University. The students also felt more rewardedbecause they were able to deliver a prototype that is almost the real software the client intended to use.Ho

5、wever, there are some minor drawbacks with this scheme especially for the teacher-in-charge who istasked not only to guide the students during the development of the projects but also to facilitate discus-sions that would enable them to learn about the projects assigned to the other groups and thus,

6、 motivatethem to serve as critiques as if they were the clients. Furthermore, he must also be present during presen-tation of major project deliverables (Project Plan, Analysis, Design, Test Specification) as well as duringproject demonstration and installation. Despite all these constraints, knowin

7、g that the project was ratedhighly satisfactorily by the client is enough reward for the teacher-in-charge.Keywords : team projects, student projects, collaborative projects, inter-disciplinary projects, softwareprojects, software engineering subject implementationIntroductionThe University of the P

8、hilippines Manila (UPM) is the premiere state university in the Philippines thatspecializes in courses for the health professions and is regarded as a health campus in the University ofthe Philippines System. It is composed of seven colleges consisting of the Arts and Sciences, Medicine,Nursing, Pha

9、rmacy, Allied Medical Professions, Public Health, Dentistry, the National Teacher TrainingCenter Health Profession, and the School of Health Sciences. At the heart of the University is the Phil-ippine General Hospital, the premiere tertiary hospital in the country that serves as training ground fors

10、tudents.In 1996, the College of Arts and Sciences,through the Department of Physical Sciences andMaterial published as part of this journal, either on-line or in print,is copyrighted by the publisher of Informing Science. Permission tomake digital or paper copy of part or all of theseworks for perso

11、nalor classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copiesare not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantageAND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full cita-tion on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works solong as credit is given. To copy

12、in all other cases or to republish orto post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific per-mission and payment of a fee. Contact Editorinform.nu to re-Mathematics (DPSM), launched the BS ComputerScience program in line with the demand for moreIT professionals in the health sciences.

13、The pro-gram was initially adopted from an existing pro-gram at the University ofthe Philippines LosBanos. Although the subjects are basically thequest redistribution permission.Editor Karen Nantz Assignment of Real-World Projectssame for both degree programs, the degree program at UPM focused on ad

14、dressing the problems of thehealth sector. Because of this, the BS Computer Science program of UPM is considered unique as thereis no university in the Philippines that specializes in the development of computer specialists for thehealth sector. Each year only 30 students are accepted due to limited

15、 slot availability.A Need for CollaborationDue to budget cuts from the government, UP Manilas budget is centered mainly on maintenance of op-erations and salaries of employees. There is hardly any budget left for improvement of operationsthrough application of information technology. The lack of res

16、ources paved the way for DPSM to pursuean active role in developing applications for UP Manila through its BS Computer Science program. Fur-thermore, DPSM believes that the BS Computer Science students will become more knowledgeable intheir field by immersing them in the development of real world pr

17、ojects rather than working with casestudies. Thus there is a need for collaboration between DPSM and the health profession colleges.Through this collaborative scheme, the health professional colleges will provide the necessary projectrequirements while DPSM will supervise the students in the constru

18、ction of the software project. It isagreed that the students will be producing an evolutionary software prototype only since the project isstill a part of the students initial training. However, the resulting prototype may be used by the collegesin order to see a snapshot of their envisioned softwar

19、e project. Additionally, changes in the set of re-quirements can be made as well as installation of new features and functions can be determined. Thiscollaboration strategy is similar to the one proposed by Mathieu (1993), Longo (1998), Harris (1995),Mehic and Al-Soufi (1999), Surendran and Young (2

20、000) and Abbott et al. (2001; 1998) the main dif-ference being in our strategy, the client is also from the same University and not from the industry.Our strategy aims not only to expose students to actual hands-on experience in developing informationsystems but also to bring technology to the acade

21、me with the least cost to the University as proposed byVan Over and Dangerfield (1993). The software prototype can later be enhanced by another group ofstudents during their Practicum Class on the following term, by the same group of students working asstudent assistants but functioning as software

22、developers, or by another group of students as maincoursework for their Special Problem (Thesis).Setting the FoundationsThe strategy is implemented in the software engineering subject, a junior subject in the BS ComputerScience curriculum. Software engineering as implemented in UP Manila is credited

23、 as a 3-unit subjectcomprising of a two-hour lecture and three-hour laboratory. It emphasizes “Software Engineering in theLarge” or the application of software engineering principles to the development of a software product bya team equivalent to a small or moderate industry project as specified in

24、the Guidelines for Software En-gineering Education Version 1.0 (Bagert, et al., 1999).At this stage, the students have already taken foundation courses, such as introduction to programmingusing procedural and object-oriented paradigm, data structures and database systems. They have alsoexperienced w

25、orking as a team of 3-5 students in their foundationcourses. Hence, they are believed tobe capable of producing a large software project working as a group under constant supervision (Bagert,et al., 1999).Before the start of the semester, DPSM coordinates a meeting with members of the IT Project Int

26、ernshipCommittee of UP Manila. This Committee is composed of faculty members who are directly involved inthe implementation of IT projects in their respective professional colleges and the software engineeringprofessors from DPSM. In this paper, the college faculty IT representatives are referred to

27、 as project re-source persons since they will have a big role in the specification of project requirements while the30 Magboo & Magboosoftware engineering professors will be referred to as teacher-in-charge since they will perform directsupervision during project initiation, development and deli

28、very. The Committee meets at least 4 timesduring the semester to report on project updates and to resolve problems associated with developmentand delivery. Regular communication is likewise facilitated through email and discussion groups. Anelectronic discussion group for the IT Project Internship C

29、ommittee is likewise established to facilitatecommunication.During the initial meeting at the start of the semester, the project resource persons submit a short de-scription of priority IT projects which is then trimmed down by the teacher-in-charge upon evaluation.The projects are selected based on

30、 their degree of difficulty and whether or not they are mission-critical.The selected projects were those perceived to be completed in one semester by a group of 3-4 students,not too easy but also not too difficult and finally not mission-critical, hence can tolerate mistakes as rec-ommended by Harr

31、is (1995). The schedule of class activities in software engineering is listed in Table 1.WEEKLECTURELABORATORYREMINDERDELIVERABLE3 - 4Teacher-in-charge writes a letter to all members of the IT Project Internship Committee to request them to pre-pare a list of priority IT projects that conform to the

32、 guidelines set for student projects in software engineeringweeksbeforestart ofclasses2 weeksbeforestart ofclass1st meeting of the members of the IT Project Internship Committee for the current school yearAgenda: Discussion of Possible IT Projects and Project Selection123Orientation and CourseRequir

33、ementsFundamentals of Informa- Assignment of Projects totion SystemsStudent GroupsApproaches to SystemsDevelopment, ProjectPlanning, Team Forma-tionInitial meeting between pro-ject resource persons and stu-dentsProject Plan due onWeek 64 5Systems AnalysisUsing a Modeling ToolSoftware Require-ments S

34、pecification(SRS) and SoftwarePrototype due onWeek 7Exercise on Require mentsDefinition and ModelingReview Target Pro-gramming Language6Presentation of Project PlanEXAM 1Project Plan7Presentation of Software Re-quirements Specification(SRS) and Software Prototypeto clientsSoftware Require mentsSpeci

35、fication, SoftwarePrototype8 - 9Systems DesignExercise on Systems DesignDesign Documentand Updated Soft-ware Prototype dueon Week 111011Web EngineeringEXAM 2Exercise on Site Organization,Navigation and LabelingPresentation of Systems De-Design Document, Up-31 Assignment of Real-World Projectssign an

36、d Updated SoftwarePrototype; Student groupsexchange Project Docu menta-tion in preparation for BlackBox Testing on Week 14dated Software Proto-type1213System Implementation,Testing and MaintenanceTest SpecificationDocument due onWeek 13, White-box Testing to beperformed onWeek 13Student Demonstratio

37、n of White Box TestingStudent Demonstration of Black Box TestingTest SpecificationDocumentation, TestResults, Updated Soft-ware Prototype141516Test ResultsEXAM 3FINAL EXAMINATIONFinal Project Presentation and Installation at Client SiteStudent Project De monstration andInstallation at Client Site;&#

38、183;2 Bound copies of the Pro-ject Documentation;·2 CDs containing sourcecode, database, installationinstructions, Users Man-ual, and Project Docu men-tationTable 1. Software Engineering subject implementation detailsMost of the projects aimed to solve problems specific to their own discipline.

39、 Below is a partial list ofsoftware engineering projects for the past 3 offerings (1999, 2000, 2001) conducted by the authors. Themajority of these projects were completed in collaboration with the College of Medicine, the largest pro-fessional college in UP Manila. The Medical Informatics Unit of t

40、he College of Medicine has been veryactive in pursuing this type of collaboration.For College of Medicine / Medical Informatics Unit / National Institutes of Health /Philippine General Hospital· Telereferral System (2000)This system enables hospitals from the provinces in the Philippines to vie

41、w the resources of the terti-ary hospitals in terms of diagnostic and therapeutic facilities as well as expert physicians in the field.Once it matches the need of a referring patient, the system makes the referral online and as soon asthe referred hospital accepts the referral, the patient can then

42、be sent to the referred hospital. Thiswill lessen the patients waiting time since the referring hospital will be able to send the patient onlyto the hospital that agreed to accept the patient. This system is similar to an online hotel reservationsystem wherein a prospective client has the option to

43、reserve a room days before his intended arrivalthus avoiding the problem of looking for specific hotel to stay right after landing. (Magboo et al.,2001a)32 Magboo & Magboo· Telepathology (2000)This project allows a surgeon to submit digitized gross and microscopic images of tissues taken fr

44、oma patient as well as his own clinical assessment to a pathologist for referral. Since the patients re-cord and graphic images are transmitted to the pathologist via the Internet, the system enables thepathologist to view the prepared tissues even if he is physically separated from the slides they

45、werederived from as well as send his own assessment. (Magboo et al., 2001b)· ENN: Electronic Nurses Notes (2000)ENN allows nurses to record the patients vital signs. The vital signs (urine, food intake, blood pres-sure etc.) represented both by text and graphs will then aid the physician in ass

46、essing the patient.(Magboo et al., 2001c)· Online Pain Clinic Registry For Department Of Anesthesiology (1999)This is a prototype of an on-line clinic registry initially applied to the Department of Anesthesiology.It enables an anesthesiologist to review patient records and store consultations

47、(medical history,clinical standing, diagnosis, and treatment plan) from any of his clinics provided each clinic hasInternet access. It is important to note that this prototype may be enhanced and further customized inorder to suit the information requirements of any specialty clinic.· Computer

48、Aided Instruction In Neurosurgery (1999)This project aims to teach neurosurgery to medical students. It has a teacher module that allows theteacher to input new lectures and quizzes and a student module to allow the students to view lecturesand take quizzes. It is also capable of playing video on ac

49、tual head operations. The software wasmade generic so that it can store different sets of information and hence, can be used in other disci-plines in the medical field.· Cancer Information Kiosk (1999)This project has two modules, the patient module and the specialist module. The patient module

50、 en-ables patients to view general information about cancer while the specialist module enables cancerspecialists to add new materials (researches, new techniques, new drugs, etc.) that can be browsed bypatients as well as doctors. It also has a quiz module that will determine the patients level of

51、under-standing of cancer based on the lectures found in the kiosk.For College of Nursing· NIS: Nursing Information System (2001)NIS collects data about Nursing Schools in the Philippines for school profiling and for generation ofstatistical reports. Through this database system, various studies

52、 such as those related to nursing cur-riculum and utilization of school resources can be made. NIS was renamed later as Philippine Nurs-ing Information System (PNIS) and was officially launched last January 2003 in a conference at-tended by Philippine universities offering a Nursing degree.For Colle

53、ge of Pharmacy· Database Of Philippine Medicinal Plants (2001)This online system serves as repository of information about plants found in the Philippines; moreparticularly, a plants medicinal value, bioactivity and constituents. The students record their find-ings by completing a form which is

54、 then verified by the subject coordinator. Once verified and ac-cepted, the information submitted will then be posted and, hence, be made available for students andfaculty conducting research.33 Assignment of Real-World ProjectsFor College of Arts and Sciences· OSET: Online Student Evaluation o

55、f Teacher (2001)OSET is a web-based application originally designed to minimize, if not eliminate, the use of thecurrent manual system of evaluation. OSET aims to protect student identity since teachers do not seethe actual handwriting and at the same time speeds up the generation of evaluation resu

56、lts requiredby the CAS administration. OSET underwent a successful pilot implementation September Octo-ber 2002 to process student evaluations for First Semester SY 2002-2003. The CAS Administrationalready acquired a new server for OSET for full implementation for Second Semester SY 2002-2003.For Co

57、llege of Arts and Sciences and Learning Resource Center· Virtual Classroom (2001)Virtual Classroom enables the system administrator to add a faculty and assign him or her to subjectsto be taught during a given semester and school year. The faculty has the ability to monitor a stu-dents class standing, upload lecture modules, quizzes and