1. Mobile-based Academic Degree Audit Application
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Barry University
11300 NE 2nd Ave.
Miami Shores, FL 33161
Phone: (305)
Roland Schiller, Julian Dasilva, and Dr. James Haralambides
(Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Barry University, Miami Shores, FL)
Barry University, Miami, FL
Abstract
Mobile Application Implementation
Degree Requirements
There has to be several academic courses taken by a student in order to graduate depending on the students major, minor and general education courses. Currently, there is no clear and easy way to check whether the student has met all the necessary requirements for graduation and it often takes up a considerably amount of time of the advisor to create a comprehensive list of each and every student‘s academic progress. In our application, based on the students transcript information, evaluation of the degree requirements are instantaneous and up to date. The degree requirements are implemented in a tree data structure. The different nodes of the tree represent degree categories such as major or minor requirements. These nodes contain a list of courses that need to be taken in order to meet the category requirements. These courses are stored in an ArrayList data structure. There are cases when in order to meet a course requirement a course must be taken at a specific level (upper division). In this case a course abbreviation and a specific number is given to the node. For example, in order to satisfy the Mathematics Minor Elective requirements, a course greater than 300 (junior year) has to be taken. The relevant tree node will store MAT-300 as a course of minimum value. The first course completed by the student in a chronological order that is not part of any other core requirement will populate the node. Things like this reduce the search space, require less coding, and lead to increased system performance. The tree nodes are utilized in Class structures that represent academic programs such as Computer Science with a Mathematics Minor. In the application prototype, only this academic program is considered, along the General Educational Requirements Class that is extended to cover academic programs within the College of Arts and Sciences. Methods are created to address the requirements of the several sub-categories of the general educational requirements. Below is a code snippet about how Theology and Philosophy requirements are constructed in code.
We are creating an automated degree audit system for mobile devices. Currently, degree audit forms must be filled out manually by advisors whose tasks include evaluating university catalogues, general education requirements, co-requisite requirements, and requirements set in the major and minor disciplines. The system is rule-based; it has online access to a student’s transcript as well as all applicable master lists of courses that fulfill degree requirements in each of the appropriate categories. The application prototype is developed for the Computer Science Major (CS) with a dedicated Mathematics Minor. Courses are classified in the following categories: General Education, Computer Science core courses, Computer Science electives, Mathematics courses in the minor, co-requisites, and general electives. Degree requirements for all of the above categories are incorporated in the system and are organized chronologically according to the catalogue year in which they apply. The application allows students that use their mobile devices to logon with their university credentials and obtain an electronic, as well as, printed copy of their unofficial degree audit document. A list of courses that fulfill all remaining requirements is optionally provided to assist students and advisors during the next registration period. In cases of courses taken that do not fall in any of the predefined categories, a list of recommendations for substitution and subsequent advisor approval is offered by the system. The system can be utilized equally by students, advisors, and administrators by setting appropriate access privileges. The application will be updated at regular intervals to accommodate changes in degree requirements.
One of the most prevalent mobile operating system is Android. More than 70% of smart phone users use these open source mobile system on their devices in many different software versions, ranging from Android 4.0 to the newest, Android 7.1 Nougat [1]. We are utilizing the official integrated developer environment (IDE), called Android Studio with Java language, to create our Degree Auditor Application. First, the students will log in with their Barry University credentials and the application will pull their academic information from WebAdvisor. This is done in the background where our application will automatically log in to the above system with the given credentials, navigate through the website by automatically clicking through the appropriate sequence of website links and finally obtain the academic information from the Transcript table of the website. The process takes around thirty seconds and this is only needed to be done once per user per semester. The student will be able to view their transcript information categorized into several disciplines, such as General Requirements, Major and Minor requirements, co-requisites, etc. These individual categories may also contain several sub-categories depending on the requirements of the degree. At the end of each section, the completed or pending courses can be seen, assuming they met the requirements of the category. The students will also have the ability to export their unofficial evaluation into a webpage that can be shared with their advisor via or can be printed out for later use.
H2O
Screenshot of main categories Screenshot of an expanded sub-category.
Web Automation Technologies
Barry University’s current system for degree evaluation is not automated. The current system, called WebAdvisor, is used for searching and registering for classes, obtaining information about class schedules, grades and checking the student’s unofficial transcript. The unofficial transcript page of the system reports all the courses taken by student in the past and present courses are shown as pending (registered) classes. This information is shown in table format with fields Grades, Credits, and Term as column headers and individual classes populating table rows.
This constitutes the required information to create an evaluation of a student’s academic plan. Currently, there is no way to access this information without logging in to the system by providing the student’s credentials and going through a series of navigation steps to get to the unofficial transcript webpage. Our project utilizes a web automation tool, called Selenium, to reach this essential information conveniently.
References
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