Student Attendance Register (SAR) System for the CIS Department

Corsework Specification

The Case Study

Student attendance register (SAR) system for the CIS Department

The Department of Computing and Information Systems (CIS) at the University of Greenwich (UoG) operates an intranet to support its core academic operations. Various subsystems on the CIS Intranet have read-only access to parts of the main UoG Academic Information System (AIS) which deals centrally with student registration, finances and progression

You have been asked to develop a system to record student attendance to teaching sessions. A teaching session can be a Lecture, a Tutorial session or a Lab session. Each session is associated with a lead member of staff and a room, lecture theatre or lab section. Courses run over periods of 13 or 26 weeks, following a set pattern.

The system should allow a course coordinator to maintain lists of students associated with the course, assign them into one of multiple lecture occurrences and into smaller tutorial/lab groups associated to tutors and rooms/labs.

The list of students comes from the central AIS system that records all students registered on a course. Each student is uniquely identified by their Student ID (SID). The course coordinator can add other students to the register list. These are students who are attending the course but they have not yet registered officially to the course. These must be centrally registered UoG students to a valid programme for CIS and they are identified by their SID or their unique computer systems user ID, also maintained centrally within the AIS. These students will be attached to the course as “temporary registrations”. Once the student registers officially to the course, their inclusion into the register lists for the course will automatically become “permanent”.

Tutors on the course can print blank registers for the current week for their own sessions. Students sign next to their name on the list during the teaching session. Following this the tutor will enter the student attendance onto the system by entering a “tick” next to each attending student’s name for that session.

During some lecture sessions, a lecturer can pass around the class a customised PDA with an integral barcode reader. Attending students will scan their student card barcode using the reader to record their attendance at the session. Following this, the lecturer will dock the PDA at a cradle at the school office that will record all attendances onto the register system.

The system also provides individual attendance records and attendance statistics to tutors, managers and admin staff within the school. Students can only see their own attendance record by logging onto the system. Finally, the system should provide a hyperlinked version of a register with links to other information on each system coming from the central AIS system, such as registration status, holds, student photograph, programme name and a list of courses the student is officially registered on.

You are part of a system development team to do the analysis, design and development of their new hybrid system. They have a tight deadline of 4 months for the system to go live, staff should be trained within 2 weeks and the analysis, design and development of the new system should be within the budget of 40,000 pounds as decided by the Vice Chancellor.

You are required (individually) to model the current business system and propose a new, integrated software

SAR system that will include all current functionality and enhancements needed.

Your job is to elicit the exact requirements from the client (your tutors). This can be done in Q and A sessions during class and on the MOODLE discussion forum. However, you will (as good software engineers) confirm in writing any assumptions and conclusions you make from these discussions. For example, assumptions and conclusion can also be made about the different stakeholders and any conflict of interest they may face.

THIS SHOULD BE DONE VIA the discussion forum. In this way everyone will have access to all the assumptions, and you will have a confirmation from the teaching team.

Deliverables

You are required to INDIVIDUALLY produce a report documenting details on your project management approach, as well as the initial requirements analysis of the new system. The report should be brief and to the point.

The report should be around 3000 words and must include the following:

a) A Rich Picture serving as an initial exploration of the primary issues and stakeholders; Include any assumptions you had to make throughout this process.

b) A root definition (and CATWOE) to be used as a starting point for the proposed design;

c) A list of functional and non-functional requirements;

d) A conceptual analysis containing:

Detailed use case diagram accompanied by two narratives (which you deem to be the main functionality) of the scenario.

 Students here should create a detailed use case diagram, with <includes> and

<extends>. The idea is for them to focus on how the staff will use the system.

e) As part of your project plan identify the SMART objectives as well as the key stakeholders

relevant to your project. Assumptions should be stated clearly.

f) Attach the Gantt chart for your project plan. You should make sure the Gantt chart is printed in an appropriate scale and only includes the work packages and activities (the individual tasks should not be included in the Gantt chart). You should make sure the individual activities are clearly identified, and that any dependencies and parallel activities are made clear.

Other relevant information for your report:

 Please include a table of contents

 Please make sure to provide a screenshot of your MS Project files in your report. You can submit the MS Project files separately as well, as a zip file in the relevant Coursework Submission area by the indicated deadline.

 Please remember that large diagrams are best reproduced on a separate page. You must ensure that the diagrams are readable! Remember that this coursework is an opportunity to show what you have learned throughout this first semester of this course.

 Please make sure that any assumptions made, need to be stated clearly in the report.

Grading Criteria

Your work will be assessed for the quality of the individual report you will produce. In particular, marks will be awarded for:

1) Clear understanding and demonstration of project management tools and techniques.

2) Correct use of the first three stages of the Soft systems methodology.

3) Correct use of UML notation.

4) Suitability and consistency between the UML models (This includes selecting suitable aspects to model for each of the diagram types).

5) Coherence between the proposed system, as expressed in the root definition, with the UML

diagrams.

6) Sophistication and novelty of the extra functionalities students will propose.

7) Demonstration of independent thinking.

8) Presentation, structure and coherence of the report.

COMP1632: DETAILED MARKING SCHEME