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ABSTRACT

This application is a user-friendly tool that encompasses all functions required to create / maintain online course and student information. An instructor can use this tool to manage all courses offered by semester, to create / update / view student information currently enrolled, to calculate grades and to post notes, assignments all in one tool. Students will use this tool to upload/download/view assignments and to view current & estimated grades for the enrolled courses by semesters. This tool facilitates centralization and sharing of course/student data. One of the main features of this tool is, it is not designed for an instructor or course, but at the university level. The main page contains university news and not specific to the courses/instructors/departments. It gets more difficult, if the courses have entirely different format for assignment submissions. The instructors are in similar situation as well, when it comes to offering more than one course per semester. The instructor has to maintain two different web pages and has to post assignments / grades / comments to both the pages. The above problem can be alleviated if a single centralized system is used for maintaining student/course information, upload/download assignments, create/update/view grades.
Hence this project provides a platform for the students as well as the instructors to make their communication easier as well as calculate and view their grades.

CONCLUSION
The tool acts as a single point of access to both students and Administrator. This eliminates the need for multiple tools and application for course maintenance. This also helps student to forecast their grades to boost their morale. Administrator can also get all the required information about the student within a few clicks. This tool can be used to access and store information for multiple courses, sections and for multiple semesters. The ease of maintenance for the amount of functionality offered makes this a best tool.

FUTURE ENHANCEMENT
This section describes some of the enhancement to this application.

Online Tutorial for Students:
This module will help student maintain their notes based on the lectures and course materials. This will help student to do online reading and taking notes at the same time without moving to different pages or using printed copies of the course materials.

Online Forum:
Online forum to post questions between students and instructor.

MODULES
Process Flow:
This section gives a brief overview of various modules and how they integrate and interact with each other.
Authentication and Authorization:
The users can be classified into different groups based on their roles. Initially there are two major classes of users; Administrator and Students. Instructors and GA’s (Graduate Assistant) can be assigned to Administrator responsibilities. Students who are enrolled for the current semester and previous semesters will be assigned to Students group.

Each user is assigned a UserID and Password that is validated against the database for authentication. Once authenticated, users are exposed to modules based on the roles assigned to them.

Features:
This section gives a brief overview of the salient feature of this application.

Single Point of Access:
All modules and their functions can be accessed from this single tool. Students can upload their assignments and also view their current and forecasted grades in the same application. It is a great tool for the Instructor / Administrator who can maintain all the information related to the course(s) in a single tool. Instructor can view both student and course information in the one application without switching back and forth between multiple systems. The instance of the system can be used to access data for multiple courses for multiple semesters.


Motivation to Students:
This will be a great tool to the students as this will help them track their grades and also view their forecasted grades. This will help them work hard to achieve their target or rank within the class.

Ease of Maintenance:
Though, there are more than a couple of modules in this application, it is the ease of maintenance that stands out of all features. The tool requires minimal information for registration, setting up roles and privileges. Once a student is set up, the student can enroll in other courses offered by the same instructor without registration. This reduces maintenance by a huge percentage.
Security:
The tool will be developed using JAVA which has the inbuilt security features. There are a wide variety of security validations that can be incorporate using the technology. As this application displays sensitive data, security becomes vital.
Effective Time Management:
As both student and the instructor can access all information within one single application, it saves time for the users.
Challenges:
This section describes some of the challenges to overcome while developing this application

Method of Upload and Storage:
Complexity in uploading different type of documents required for assignments, grades and course. Also evaluation of the storage capacity based on the number of students, courses and history needed to be maintained.

Database Design:
The number of modules within the application makes it a big challenge to design a database that is efficient. Storage of assignments and course information and the relationship between the two will further increase the complexity.

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