Diploma of IT (Software Development) – Student Major Project

							               Diploma of IT (Software Development) – Student Major Project




A consortium of co-clients

        CIT Course Coord (Laurie Johns)
        Distance Learning (Terese McAleese)
        Customised Training and Development (Paul Williams)




Open Source RAD project based on the upgrade of existing systems being

    SELI the CIT Bulletin Board
    Distance Learning Database and website.
    WebCT

The RAD methodology will allow this project to be delivered over more than one Project Group Period if
required.
The project should be developed with maximum reusability in mind all programming
should employ the principles of total customisability for the client at installation time.



Development of:

   1.   New Promotional Site for CIT and Distance Learning
   2.   The new curriculum material delivery site for CIT
   3.   WWW access to Admin Database for open/distance learning students
   4.   Automation of student details for Admin Database
   5.   New TAFE and CIT Button set for new WebCIT site



           RAD Project to be rolled out as an Incremental Development.
           Some project capability may be carried forward to future Project Groups for development in
            line with RAD objectives.

(a measure of success or failure of the project)

       No loss of existing capability or ease of use by students.
         Still teacher owned,
               o Subject Coordinators and teachers to have total control over content,
               o Able to upload and modify content at will.
         Retain current ease of material upload enabling documents to be developed and uploaded as
           any file type. There is to be no degradation of current levels of ease of use by staff.
1. New Promotional Site for CIT and Distance Learning
(Will be as servlets. Exist now, but not in right format, too complicated)
    Dynamically generated Internet Site
    The enhancement of the current SELI system as a course promotional front end.
    This site is to be non subject content delivery oriented and open to the WWW without a login.
    It will be a showcase of current and existing projects, and contain general course details design
       to promote our state of the art courses.
    CIT/Course Admin staff will have pages in this area of the new system.
    System will run on a LINUX platform.
    Ability to publish web page content from a database
    Language flexible needs to run on Linux Platform.


2. The new curriculum material delivery site for CIT
(will be as servlets. Test bed is provided. Doesn’t exist at the moment)
     New WebCIT Project to be as Object Oriented as possible in a web based environment and be
        three tiered.
            o WebCT as the user interface layer.
            o A middle ware product to provide connectivity to webCT as a tool.
            o The existing document data storage modified and ported to the webCT server.

      The new curriculum material delivery product is to be based on the WebCT interface and sit as
       a tool of WebCT.
      This capability should be built as a WebCT tool.
      A middle ware component is required to connect functionality to webCT.
      Current server Windows 2000 needs to be capable of running on either windows 2000 or
       LINUX platforms
      Language Java Servlets.

3. WWW access to Admin Database for open/distance learning students
(Will be ASP)
    A WWW capacity for students to view their progress status from the administration database.
    This is expected to be implemented as additional functionality to objective 2
    Language same as objective 2 a degree of flexibility JSP, or ASP etc capable of being hosted
       on LINUX Platform.

4. Automation of student details for Admin Database
(Will be in Perl. Test Bed is provided)
    The development of an interface to allow student details to be automatically downloaded to an
       external SQL server database.




5. New TAFE and CIT Button set for new site
      The development of a standard set of TAFE/CIT Buttons (Buttonset) for the new system.
      Macromedia editors etc. May be possible to contract out to Multimedia Major Projects Group.

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1.0     Introduction

This report provides an outline of the project to be developed by Con.fusion for the Swinburne
Distance Learning department, Customised Training Development department and Swinburne CIT
Course Coordinators; and contains the information that will form the project.

Swinburne Distance Learning department provides a flexible way of studying. Students will attend
some face-to-face classes as well as studying over the Internet by means of computer based training
programs and Internet communication software.

The Customised Training Development department's role is to support the development,
implementation and evaluation of flexible approaches to training delivery.

CIT Internet website is a specialist unit setup by Swinburne so that students have continued access
to course notes and course curriculum material. The website is continually being updated and
constantly growing.

The software development team will include the following team members:

        Client:
               CIT Course Coords
               Distance Learning
               Customised Training and Development

        Project Team:
              The software development team (Con.fusion) consisting of:
               Natasha Dallas – Team Leader,
               Bradley Clift – Quality, Progress & Testing Manager,
               George N. Bilios – Development Manager.

        Project Mentor:
               Laurie Jones


2.0     Scope

2.1 Project Description

The purpose of this project is to add the required features to CIT web-site and create new
promotional sites for CIT and Distance Learning which would provide all necessary features to
simplify the gathering of information.

2.2 List of project deliverables

Development of:

   1.   New Promotional Site for CIT and Distance Learning.
   2.   The new curriculum material delivery site for CIT.
   3.   New TAFE and CIT Button set for new WebCIT site.
   4.   WWW access to Administration Database for open/distance learning students.
   5.   Automation of student details for Administration Database.




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2.3 Methodologies

          RAD Project to be rolled out as an Incremental Development.
          Some project capability may be carried forward to future Project Groups for development
           in line with RAD objectives .


3.0    Resources

The following is a list of other resources that are to be used in the development of this project:

      The previously mentioned project team.
      Computer hardware, software and Internet services provided by
       Swinburne University.
      Template files provided by Swinburne University.
      Various software and servers provided by Swinburne University.
      Information on the current CIT site provided by the client.



4.0    Business Impact

4.1 Constraints

The project has a time constraint of four months, which has been allocated by the management of
Swinburne University .

4.2 Tangible benefits

      Improve service.
      Save time for staff.
      Reusability of the system.
      Robust, efficient and quicker system.

4.3 Intangible benefits

      Improvement in efficiency and accuracy.
      Easy to manage.
      A user-friendly system will improve staff satisfaction.



5.0    Expected delivery dates

The development of the project is to commence on 16 th of July 2002.

Systems testing and coding must be completed by 25 th of October 2002.

The new system will be presented to the client on the 29 th of November 2002.




6.0    List of absolute requirements for establishing success

      No loss of existing capability or ease of use by students.
        Still teacher owned:
              o Subject Coordinators and teachers to have total control over content,
              o Able to upload and modify content at will.
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   Retain current ease of material upload enabling documents to be developed and uploaded
    as any file type. There is to be no degradation of current levels of ease of use by staff.




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