MINIPROJECT REPORT ONLINE FEEDBACK COLLECTION SYSTEMS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF COMPUTER APPLICATIONS By SREEJITH

K Y2M006 S5 MCA Under the guidance of Dr. M.P.Sebastian Department of Computer Science and Engineering National Institute of Technology, Calicut

CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the work reported in this project report entitled ONLINE FEEDBACK COLLECTION SYSTEMS , is a bonafide record of the project work done Mr. Sreejith K, a student in the Department of Computer engineering, National Instit ute of Technology Calicut from August 2004 to November 2004 in partial fulfilment for t he award of the degree of Master of Computer Applications of the National Institute of Techn ology Calicut. Head of the Department: Project Guide: Dr.V.K.Govindan Dr.M.P.Sebastian Professor and Head Assistant Professor Dept of Computer Engineering Dept of Computer Engineering NIT Calicut NIT Calicut Project Co-ordinator Dr. Vineeth Kumar P Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Engineering NIT Calicut

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to put on records my sincere thanks to Dr. V.K.Govindan , H.O.D., D epartment of Computer Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut for his constant support during the project. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my project guide, Dr. M. P. Seba stian, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut for his constant support and guidance without which my project could not have been c ompleted. I express my sincere thanks to our project coordinator Dr. Vineeth Kumar P, Assi stant Professor, Department of Computer Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut, for providing valuable suggestions on project work and preparing the report. I express my sincere thanks to my friend Sandeep P K for helping me in my projec t work. Thanks to all of my friends for their support and valuable suggestions. Sreejith K Y2M006

Abstract Developing effective mechanisms for feedback collection in learning environments is particularly important at the frontiers of new knowledge .Valuin g and asking for feedback has recognised benefits for both staff and students. For Staff to provi de information for course design to further develop teaching skills as well as to provide better se rvice to the students. For Students to feel valued and 'listened' to have ownership in their own learning to develop reflective thinking to be better informed in selecting a course/module . The online feedback collection systems, described in this project are two such applications for collecting feedback through a web interface. Intended to s upport feedback collection in educational environments .ITC feedback system collects feedback fr om users about the services offered by for Information Technology and Communication wing (ITC) of NITC. Faculty-feedback system is intended to collect feedback about faculty, fro m students.

Contents 1. Introduction .5 2. Problem Definition ..6 2.1 Existing System ...6 2.2 Proposed System .....6 2.3 Features of proposed system ...6 System Requirenments .. ...........7 4. Design .. .8 4.1 Design of module 1. ... ....8 4.1.1 Use case diagram for module 1 ... ...8 4.1.2 Class diagram for module 1 ... ........10 4.1.3 Sequence diagram for module 1... .. ...11 4.2 Design of module 2. ... ....12 4.2.1 Use case diagram for module 2 ... ...12 4.2.2 Class diagram for module 2 ... ........13 4.2.3 Sequence diagram for module 2... .. ...14 4.3 Database design .14 5. Implementation ..15 5.1 Prerequisites ... ....15 5.2 Implementation Issues ... 15 5.2.1 Prospective Users ...16 5.2.2 Platform Independence ...17 5.2.3 Storage Issue ...17 6. Testing and Results ...17 7. Conclusion ... ...21 8. References ...21

1. INTRODUCTION Getting the right feedback at right time is of at most importance ,for any organization or faculties of an institution .Getting the feedback from the users will help an organization or faculty to provide better services to the users or students. Ong oing interaction with users can help improve the efficiency of an organization, and enable them t o provide better service to the users. Collecting feedback from the users is very important thing for any organization . Until now , feedback collection process is conducted manually, using printed forms. All that has changed with the computer network as well as World Wide Web, making communication far easy .I t is very easy to collect feedback about an organization , or about the staff of an instit ution through a web based system. Valuing and asking for feedback has recognized benefits for both staff and students in an institution. For Staff to provide information for cours e design to further develop teaching skills to match learning to learners needs to support bids for funding teaching projects For Students to feel valued and 'listened' to to have ownership in thei r own learning to develop reflective thinking to be better informed in selecting a course/modul e For All to enhance relationships and define roles to provide a 'positive' teacher/student p artnership, which in turn has more chance of ensuring high quality teaching, thereby meeting learn ers' needs to establish learning objectives, and measure the extent to which they are met to i nform executive action, policy developments and resource allocation as part of quality assurance procedure Feedback should be encouraged to be positive as well as giving suggestions conce rning areas that could be enhanced. This project aims to develop two online feedback collection systems systems, One system is intended to collect the feedback from users of Information Technol ogy and Communication(ITC) wing of National Institute of Technology, Calicut. Second par t of the project is to develop an online feedback collection system for collecting feedba ck about the faculty , from the students.

2. PROBLEM DEFENITION 1. This project aims to develop an online web-based feedback collection system f or Information Technology and Communication wing (ITC) of NITC. This system has two user levels . Administrator and User. The user means the student/faculty who has the access to the services provided by ITC. The user can post his/her opinions, request and queries through a web-based interface. The administrator can analyze the feedback, query the feedback and re ply to the user. 2. Second part of this project aims to develop a feedback system which can be us ed by the students to give the feedback to the faculty. This system will provide a web-bas ed interface to the students, where they can write their feedback, comments and queries, about the c ourse offered by a particular faculty and send this feedback to the corresponding faculty. This s ystem enables the faculty to easily get feedback from their students 2.1 Existing System The existing method for collecting feedback about the faculty from the students makes use of printed forms on paper. Students write their feedback and submit it to the faculty. This is very time consuming and costly procedure. Preparing the printed form and collecting the forms back from the students is a time consuming procedure. Collecting the feedb ack from the students about the service offered by ITC is also such a time consuming and diff icult procedure. 2.2 Proposed System The proposed system is a web based system. The user can log in to the system with a valid ID and password, fill in an online feedback form and submit the fee dback to the system. The administrator can later analyze the feedback 2.3 Features of the proposed system The proposed online feedback collection system is a web based system. So valid users can access it from anywhere .This is a platform independent system. So the re is no need for installing any additional software on the client systems. The new system iss ues the users , asset of questionnaires. The user answers the question and submits this feedback . This is very effective, fast and cost effective method for collecting the feedback. .The user s, who give the feedback, are authenticated with a Login ID and password.

3. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS The following are the system requirements for online feedback collection systems Hardware Requirements Pentium III processor or above At least 128 MB RAM 10 GB Hard disk Software Requirements Apache Tomcat Web Server JSP MySQL JDK Platform Java Script enabled web browser

4. DESIGN This section deals with the activities performed and diagrams created during the design phase of the system. Use case diagram, class diagram and seque nce diagrams are created for each of the two modules of this project. 4.1 Module 1: Feedback collection system for ITC 4.1.1 Use case Diagram Actors User : student or staff , who is having access to the service of ITC Administrator FBC : : Administrator of ITC, who analyse the feedback, given by the user Feedback controller, which is a software module which take care of Issuing feedback form and storing the feed back. 8 Feedback Controller (FBC) User Request feedback form Verify the user Issue the feedback form Submit the form Analyse the feedback and reply

Administrator <<include>> User <<include>> Request feedback form Enter authentication data Submitting request to FBC <<include>> User <<include>> Submit the form Fill up the form Submit the form to FBC <<include>> Administrator Analyse the feedback Querying the feedback

4.1.2 Class Diagram Online Feedback Collection System User name:string id:string Login( ) Logout( ) Request form( ) Submitform( ) Administrator query_feedback( ) Feedback_ controller Storage_ manager store_feed back( ) Login Validator validate( ) Form_issue issue_form( )

4.1.3 Sequence Diagram User FBC Login_va lidator Form_isu e Administ rator Storage_ manager request_form( ) Issue_loginform() Enter_login data verify_login() login_OK issue the feedback form submit the feedback store the feedback Acknowledge the feedback

4.2 Module 2: Feedback collection system which collect feedback about faculty 4.2.1 Use case Diagram Actors student FS : : student of the institute, who input his feedback about the faculty to the systemFeedback System, which take feedback from student as the input, store the feedback in a file associated with the corresponding faculty. student Feedback system(FS) Request evaluation form Validate the student Issue the evaluation form Submit the form Store and Forward the feedback Request feedback form Enter authentication data student <<include>> \

<<include>> student <<include>> Submit the evaluation form Fill up the form Submit the form to FS Submit the evaluation form Fill up the form Submit the form to FS 4.2.2 Class Diagram Online Faculty feedback collection system student name:string id:string Login( ) Logout( ) Request form( ) Submitform( ) Feedback forwarding System Storage_ manager Savefeedba ck( ) retrieve( ) Authenticat ion mgr authenticat e( ) Evaluation form issue issue_form( )

4.2.3 Sequence Diagram request_form( ) Issue_loginform() Enter_login data verify_login() login_OK issue the evaluation form submit the form store and forward the feedback student FS Authentic ation mgr Form_isu e Storage_ manager 4.3 Database Design Tables Used 1. Name of the Table : student (This table is used to store the details about the students) Attribute Type Comment Sname Character Name of the student Rollno Character RollNo of student Course Character Name of the course Login Character Login ID Branch Character Branch of the course Password Character Login password Batch Character Year of admission

2.Name of the table : admin (This table is used to store the authentication data of Administrator) Attribute Type Comment Admin Character ID of Administrator Passwd Character Password of Administrator 3.Name of the table : staff (This table is used to store the login details of the faculties) Attribute Type Comment Stname Character Name of the staff Filename Character Filename associated with staff Password Character Login password Dept Character Name of the department 5 IMPLEMENTATION This section deals with the implementation details of the system designed in the previous section. Implementation is the process of converting design to code. The entitie s identified from design are to be implemented considering the association between them and how th ey communicate with each other. 5.1 Prerequisite The interface for this system has been designed using Macromedia Dream Weaver, JavaScript, and JSP. And MySQL has been used as data storage. 5.2 Implementation Issue This section deals with the discussion of the implementation issues that are fou nd in the system. All aspects of the system are not discussed in this section. Only import ant aspects of the system are discussed. The implementation issue has to be discussed mainly on the following aspects: 1. Prospective users 2. Platform independency 3. Storage issues

5.2.1. Prospective users: In Module 1, feedback collection system for ITC, there are two levels of prospective users. User, who is a student or user of services provided by ITC, a nd Administrator, who is in charge of ITC Following are the actions associated with the User User log in to the system with a valid ID and password. User can request for one of the following feedback form Feedback form for Main Computer center Feedback form for LAN center

User can answer the questionnaires, write comments in the form and submit the fo rm to the feedback system Feedback system stores the feedback given by the user in to a file Following are the actions associated with Administrator Administrator log in to the system with a valid ID and password. Administrator can perform the following operations Add ,delete or edit Users View the feedback about Main Computer Center View the feedback about LAN center In Module 2 , feedback system to collect feedback about faculty, there are three types of prospective users. Administrator , staff and students. Administrator is the person, who is having the responsibility of the system. Administrator can perform the following actions Add new students,Delete or Edit existing students Add new faculty Delete existing faculty

Staff indicates the faculty of the institution Faculty log in to the system with a valid ID Faculty can read the feedback given by the students Students of the institution can perform the following actions o Each student log in to the system with a valid ID o Student can request the feedback form for a particular faculty. o Student can answer the questionnaires and write comments in the feedback form. o The system stores the feedback along with the student s details in to a file associated with the particular faculty 5.2.2. Platform Independence: Since this feedback systems are developed using Java tools like JSP, JavaScript, this application is platform independent. Since these feedback colle ction systems are web-based application, they can be accessed from any system in the institute , a s well as in the entire world, provided the user is having a valid Login ID. 5.2.3 Storage Issue: The feedbacks submitted by the students are stored directly in to files, which m akes editing and deletion of the feedback easy. The authentication information is sto red in MySQL database. 6. TESTING AND RESULTS The system developed has to be tested to check whether it conforms to the specification. The testing is done to guarantee that the system is functioning a s defined in the requirements specification and is free of known errors and bugs. Using test data and examining the outputs of the system helps to track errors that may present in the system. This is done at various stages of development to ensure that each stage is free of errors

The different testing strategies used are: 1. Unit testing Different units of the systems are tested separately. Certain set of inputs are given to the different modules of the system, and output from each module is verified 2. System testing Entire system is tested as a whole unit. Selected set of inputs are given to the system .Some feedback forms are filled by entering in to the system in user logi n, then the feedbacks are verified, by analyzing them, by login in to system as administ rator 3. Black box testing Various inputs are given and the outputs are verified. Here the functionality of the system is verified, by giving certain feedback as input, and verifying the retri eved feedback, which is the output. The functionality of the system is tested with ou t referring to the source code of the system 4. White box testing Different sections of the code is analyzed and tested, that it will work correct ly, without any errors and bugs Results: The results are verified by observing the input and output. Following are the screen shots of the Online Feedback Collection System Log in Form

Feedback Form

Retrieved Feedback

CONCLUSION A web based interface for makes feedback collection easy. veloped. A web-based interface for f the system is authenticated using ID Future Works Enhance the existing system, by storing the feedback in to a database , instead of a file so that the statistics about the feedback obtained can be easily analysed 8. REFERENCES 1. Software Engineering , 6th edition by Ian Somerville Published by Pearson Educatio n 2. Core JAVA Volume 2 by CAY S HORSTMANN and GARRY CORNELL published by Pearson Education 3. www.jsptut.com getting feedback from users of ITC is developed, which A web based interface for analyzing the feedback is de giving feedback to a faculty is developed. Each user o and password