Dissertation Allocation System

Currently, every academic year, staff involved with the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Part C modules MMC500 and MMC501 are asked to supply proposals for undergraduate projects by entering the details of the project in to a word document that is circulated via email during the summer. Completed proposals are sent via email to the project proposer and secretary to process, approve and publish on Learn for students to review. Initially, the proposals are published without supervisors’ details to allow students to browse through just the project list. It is often found that staff complete up to 5-6 proposals on a single word document. This requires the project proposer to separate the individual proposals which is particularly time consuming. As the forms are generally submitted at the last minute, it is also common to find key sections not completed which causes major problems. This project proposes to automate this system by developing a web-based project allocation system that allows staff to submit project details, and the details be published as web pages in two stages, revealing firstly only brief project details, and later including supervisors contact details.

Brief Project Description
This project proposes to automate much of the current project allocation process by developing a Learn based system that enables staff to fill in all fields of the project proposal online. The web form could then be automatically validated to ensure all fields are completed before submission is possible. Developing a web-based system would enable the submission to be emailed to the project proposer and the author (project staff) as an attachment or formatted email.Once accepted, the proposal needs to be published to one of two web pages depending on the project weighting (30 and 40 weight projects are run within the school). Initially, only the body of the proposal needs to be accessible to enable students to browse and consider the projects. On the first day of term, the system needs to reveal all details of the proposed project (including project number, supervisor, second reader etc) to allow students to approach supervisors and discuss the projects in detail.

The system is now in use in three departments; Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and the Institute of Polymer Technology & Materials Engineering (IPTME).

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Dissertation Allocation System:
APPLICATION DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS