SmartBoard is an online learning management system designed to facilitate learning in an efficient and engaging manner. The system will allow both students and educators to enroll in courses where they have access to course content, quizzes, and discussion forums. SmartBoard will ensure that learning experiences are suitable in the modern digital age and help dismantle accessibility barriers associated with traditional education.
Name: Vidyut Periyasamy
Student number: 47033731
Account Creation and Management: Users will be able to register as either a student or educator and manage their accounts.
Course Creation and Management: Educators will be able to create and manage courses including visibility and enrollments.
Content Creation and Management: Educators will be able to upload content in various formats to the course and manage accessibility.
Announcements: Educators will be able to broadcast announcements that alert students through their registered emails and phone numbers.
Student Discussion Forum: Students and educators can engage in a discussion forum to ask questions related to course content and assessment.
Quizzes and Examinations: Students will be able to take online quizzes and examinations that consist of multiple-choice questions or written responses on the platform.
Assessment Upload: Educators can create submission portals to which students will be able to upload assessments in various formats and receive confirmations.
Grading and Feedback: Educators can grade assessments and provide feedback students can view.
Analytics and Reporting: Educators will receive analytics regarding student progression and engagement with course content.
Multi-Device Accessibility: The service will be available and usable across a variety of devices including PC, laptop, tablet and mobile.
The minimum viable product for SmartBoard is defined as follows:
Account Creation: Users will be able to create an account, but modification is not needed for the MVP.
Course Creation: Educations may create accounts and add students. Course accessibility restrictions are not necessary.
Content Creation and Management: Educators will be able to add content in various formats to the course. Content restrictions are not necessary.
Announcements: Course staff can broadcast announcements to students enrolled in a course. For the MVP, only email broadcasting will be implemented.
Quizzes and Examinations: For the MVP, only multiple-choice quizzes will be implemented.
Assessment Upload: Educators can create submission portals to which students can upload assignments in various file formats.
Availability is crucial as both students and educators will expect access to course content at any time. Students often have time constraints associated with assignments or examinations and not being able to access course content can be detrimental to their education outcomes.
As there are relatively high stakes with online examinations and submission of assessments, reliability is crucial. The system should be robust and fault tolerant and provide detailed logs and reports so that students may have examinations rescheduled or assignments extended in the case of failure. Data collected within the system such as uploaded files or responses to online assessments should be persisted even in the event of catastrophic failure.
There are likely to be times with extremely low and high demand associated with this application. There are periods such as the semester breaks where there will be almost no usage for weeks at a time, there will also be periods such as immediately prior to examinations where there will be significant usage by almost all users.
Australian tertiary educations are an increasingly common target for cyber attacks due to both their intellectual property and valuable user information it is critical that the system is resistant to such attacks. Security audits and vulnerability assessments can be performed on the system to mitigate security threats. Furthermore, techniques such as MFA and RBAC could be implemented to limit the likelihood and consequences of account compromise.
Security evaluations are not within the scope of this course but techniques such as MFA and RBAC could potentially be implemented and tested.