College Currents Proposal Paper
September 13, 2010
Owen Herndon, Jake Elrod, Elizabeth Brown, Jonathan Rhodes
Problem Statement
With Today’s job market it is necessary for many job applicants to not only have the right degree but also graduate from the right college. However, for many high school students, making a decision about where and why to go to college is not the easiest choice. Many different schools specialize in specific areas as well as have specific criteria to be admitted into their institution. Furthermore, many high school students are not even sure what industry they would like to pursue a job in, much less what school they should go to for it.
Making a decision about where and why to go to college is often one of the most important decisions a high school student will make. Students as well as parents often take days off from school and work to make expensive trips to multiple colleges in order to decide which school would be best. It is not unusual for a student to spend $3,000 on such trips before he or she even attends his or her first class (USA Today, 2008).
In order to help the average high school student with his or her decision on where to go to college, Open Source Teaching provides sound bites of lectures as well as information about leading institutions so that each student can get an idea of what certain colleges are like. However, in order for students to have a better experience and a greater understanding about the colleges they are interested in, College Currents provides not only information and sound bites, but video as well.
The average internet user makes aesthetic judgments in as little as 50 ms
(weboptimization.com), so College Currents must also have a consistent and modern look and feel that is appropriate for its young audience. At the same time, College Currents needs to be well organized and not too busy. Often, web designers throw too much flash, pictures, links, or even colors into a website, which can deter many users from staying on the site for more than a few moments.
Navigation is also important. A user’s disorientation while navigating a web site is directly related to the number of changes in the navigation schema that the user experiences while searching for information on the web site (Danielson 2003). Many users often get confused or lost when a website has poor navigation or the navigation changes throughout the website, so it is crucial that College Currents also has a fluent, well-designed navigation that is consistent throughout the website.
College Currents must be able to pull students in using modern approaches to web design in order to give students the equal coverage of different colleges that they would get visiting those colleges themselves. To pull its audience in, College Currents must have a more contemporary layout that is well organized and has consistent navigation throughout while also providing the necessary content (audio and video) for its users to gain the desired information easily.
System Overview
CollegeCurrent's will be a website designed to aid high school students as they prepare for college. The site will provide research tools and tips that will help as students understand what to expect as they enter college and how colleges differs from one another.
The website will have the following functions, along with the benefits gained:
- Organization of Information into three categories: Institutions, People, and Interests
- Allows for visitors to browse and view web pages by the category that they want
- Will help with backend management of web pages
- Provide audio and video clips about each college
- Provides insight on how the class rooms at each college operate
- Provides a unique draw for users to visit the website
- Provide a continually updated blog
- Acts as another communication tool for people to share their experiences and expertise that they gained from attending college
- Offers another channel by which to attract visitors to the website
- Change the format and navigation of the website
- Allows for an attractive, simple, and easy-to-navigate website
- Designed to appeal and attract the targeted high school audience
By utilizing the aforementioned website functions, CollegeCurrents will provide a great, alternative outlet for high school students looking to research colleges and gain a better understanding of college curricula and life. Through the use of audio, video, and student-friendly blogs, this website will provide unique content that will continue to pull visitors back to the website. Lipscomb University’s Senior Project team is the most cost effective choice for various reasons. First, there will be savings of thousands of dollars in development costs alone by choosing the senior project team over other professional development teams. Second, by choosing to use a third-party Internet host instead of hosting the site in-house, there are thousands of dollars to be saved due to hardware, bandwidth, and maintenance costs.
Project Schedule
Project & Team Assignment
The College Currents Team met with Dr. Geddes and was assigned our project, Open Source Teaching.org.
Meeting with Sponsor
This consisted of meeting with Mr. & Mrs. Sevier to discuss their current site and their ideas about improvements and additional features that they would like to see in the site we create for them. The meeting lasted approximately 45 minutes.
Sponsor Report
Our notes and audio from the sponsor meeting was compiled to create the sponsor report document, which we turned in to Dr. Geddes on Monday, August 30. A copy is also included in our administrative digest.
Creation of Proposal Document
The sections of the Proposal Document, problem statement, system overview, project schedule, budget, and project personal, were divided up and assigned each to a member of the team to complete.
Creation of Proposal Presentation
College Currents Team will create a PowerPoint presentation from the information in our Proposal and will present it to Dr. Geddes and our sponsor.
Proposal Documentation and Presentation
The presentation will be made to Dr. Geddes and our sponsor on Monday, September 13, and the documentation will be posted on our website.
Cost/Benefit Analysis
The team will analyze the various options available for the site and determine the cost versus the benefits of each.
Feasibilities Analysis
Will consist of the features that our sponsor wishes to include in the site and in what ways we can feasibly complete them with the current team members and in the allotted time.
Alternative Solutions Analysis
This is the various ways we can complete the features that our sponsor want and determine which solutions work the best for their situation.
Create DFD and ERD
Creation of Data Flow Diagrams and an Entity Relationship Diagram, which are the beginnings of our Data Dictionary. These will include all the flows and entities in our system.
Proposed System Requirements Specification Document and Presentation
College Currents Team will create a document containing these sections: introduction, system features and system scope, system objectives, project constraints and state holders, alternate solutions, alternative choice and justification, system description, system design schedules, and appendices. We will present and make it available on our website.
System Analysis
During this time the System Analysis document will be completed. Covering the system features, project scope, analysis or the present system, DFDs and an ERD, use case scenarios, data dictionary, output reports, an updated system development and project management schedule and appendices.
Planning Phase
In this phase, we will plan how to organize, layout, code, and implement the site for our sponsor.
Requirements Gathering Phase
Here we will gather the requirements for our site, so that we can ensure that all the needs of the sponsor are met and that the sponsor knows what we can accomplish for them.
Send Requirements List to Sponsor for Approval
A list of requirements will be complied and sent to our sponsor for them to review. Once our sponsor approves of the list, we can continue our development.
Designing Phase
The team will update the sections already covered in the SRS documentation. We will also include hardware specifications, software and platform integration, physical DRDs, a prototype with GUI, an implementation strategy, a description of our implementation, a training schedule, a training manual and user’s manual, and analyze future needs.
Physical Design Document and Presentation
This will include the physical layout of the system, the physical DFDs, hardware & software requirements, and the platform we’ve chosen to run the software. We will present these either as a partially working prototype or as a graphical representation of individual system parts.
Prototype with GUI
Creation of a prototype of the Graphical User Interface for the site. We project that we will require multiple prototypes during the development process. After its creation, we will review its strengths and problems to be addressed in the next prototype.
Implementation Strategy
An implementation strategy will be selected and justified to why that strategy is the best option along with the risks and cost involved with the strategy.
Training Manual & User’s Manual
A Training Manual will be written, which will document the specific modules for training individuals to use the site as well as including practice exercises. We will also create a User’s Manual, which will walk users through process within the operation of the site with which they might not be familiar.
Final Presentation Document and Presentation
The College Currents Team will create a final presentation containing a fully functional site and demonstrate the use of the site. This will be presented to Dr. Geddes and our sponsor.
Budget
Resource / Actual Cost to Sponsor / Estimated Cost for External CompletionOngoing Services
Domain / $39.98 / $39.98
Hosting / $34.95 / $34.95
Development Cost
Personnel: Team Leader / $0 / $56,250
Personnel: Other Team Members / $0 / $118,125
Project Overhead / $0 / $69,750
Total / $75 / $244,199.93
The total estimated project cost is $244,199.93 in onetime cost with a monthly recurring cost of $34.95 for web hosting and a annually recurring cost of $39.98 for the renewal of the domain. The main component of the onetime cost is the development team's hours. The teams lead developer bills at $250 an hour while the other three team members bill at $175 an hour. To simulate the amount of time this project will take we estimate fifteen hours of work a week over a fifteen week period. Overhead is also calculated by taking forty percent of the personnel payment. Due to the fact that College Currents is web hosted hardware cost and maintenance cost for the hardware are avoided.
Project Personnel
The leader for the College Currents senior project is Owen Herndon. He is from Nashville, Tennessee and is working on a Information Technologies Applications Major and General Business Minor. Outside of his required courses taken he has also taken a few higher level management classes as well which will be helpful in the completion of this project. He was part of the Lipscomb iPhone App development Internship which took place during the summer of 2010. His main focus during the internship was the students schedule application. He also participated in a project during the spring of 2010 that revised and corrected errors on a statics application for David Lipscomb's High School football program.
The second member of the College Currents project team is Jake Elrod. He is from Duluth, Georgia, he is Majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. Jake has also taken many higher level electives in those two areas. He developed the Map App for the Lipscomb 2010 iPhone App Internship which involved him mapping every possible route on the Lipscomb Campus, as well as created Lipscomb's Math Department's website. His coding expertise will be a key part in the completion of this project.
The third member of the team is Elizabeth Brown. She is from Columbia, Tennessee and is pursuing a Web Application Development Major and a Graphic Design Minor. She has taken some higher level art and design classes that will be utilized in the creation of the College Currents website which has a key emphasis on look and appeal. Elizabeth was responsible for designing the promotional poster for the Lipscomb University A Cappella Singers Concert, has worked with The Davidson Group assisting with social media and email newsletters, and has updated the Department of Computing and Information Technology Website for Lipscomb University. She also held an internship at Deloitte Services, LP over the summer of 2010.
Our fourth and final member is Jonathan Rhodes. He is from Nashville, Tennessee and is Majoring in Information Technology Applications and Corporate Management. Jonathan is a student worker from the Lipscomb University Office of Communications and Marketing and has worked on many projects such as: Creating an access database program and updating processes of the Lipscomb University website. He also has created a website for a local photography company as well as participated in a project during the spring of 2010 that revised and corrected errors on a statics application for David Lipscomb's High School football program.
Bibliography
Danielson, D.R. (2003). Transitional Volatility in Web Navigation. IT & Society, 1 (3), 131-158.