The Campus Assistance Tool CampusTracker The Campus Assistance Tool

Modern Universities Campus is alive Many learning opportunities for students to engage in Exposure to a diverse number of campus interests

Main Concepts Application focused on delivering relevant data to student’s fingertips Create campus awareness among students Promote exploration and growth of many learning disciplines

Who Wants It? Campus students of all ages and skill levels Freshmen could use it to navigate the campus Seniors could use it to track down career fairs

Specific Feature Set Deliver desired data to user in real time and on the fly Make use of location awareness to visually present data (i.e. informing the user what is going around him/her) Allow users to customize received data based on profile Provide an API for service providers

Implementation Models A central server will hold a vast database Clients running on mobile devices will communicate with the server to gather data Relevant data will be grouped as “services” a user can “subscribe” to Location tracking through wireless trilateration (802.11b protocol)

Who Will Support It? Service should be offered and maintained by the University. A group needs to ensure that the server is up to date and running properly Client software should be offered free to student body

Stakeholders, Risks, and Payoffs Main stakeholder is the university; they spend the time and money to implement the service. Worst thing is that no one uses the service, or students find it redundant; university loses time and money Payoff is improved university image, since students have a richer learning experience

Feasibility Are we nuts? From the developer’s perspective, the implementation is feasible. Similar things have been done (UCSD’s ActiveCampus) Hardware constraints: WiFi sucks up a lot of power, how long can the user be connected without their device dying? Realistically, we will need widespread deployment for the application to grow Will all students be able to have a mobile device? (time to start asking MS for more donations…) Service providers will have to evaluate whether it’s worth providing the service or not

In Case You’re Still Wondering… A few use cases: Bob passes by the Allen Center, and sees that there is a talk on compilers that is being given on the 6th floor Sarah wants to know when her next bus will arrive James is eating lunch at the hub, when his mobile device alerts him of a career fair going on upstairs Jenny happens to pass by Schmitz on her way to the bookstore, and her mobile device reminds her tuition is due in three days Mike has a question for his data structures class, and he quickly checks if his professor is holding office hours