Practical Applications in Education field through Graduation Thesis of FPT University Students

The Spring semester thesis defense period of FPTU students is expected to take place from May 13-16th, 2020 with many interesting and practical topics.

With more than 50 topics along with the participation of 200 FPT University students, many products are expected to contribute in important areas of life. In particular, the projects of FPTU students are spread amongst majors such as education, economics, culture, art, etc. After 3 months of being instructed by the lecturers to implement the project, the students will be "on stage" to present and demonstrate their project products. Being through many the English Enhancement Program and 8 semesters with lots of efforts, the graduation thesis is one of the decisive factors for the result of 4 hard-working years of the ‘Toads’ in FPTU. As a student, With a lot of participation in the school environment activities, it is not too strange for the students to choose a project related to the educational field. . 

Marking practice exam automatically with DevOps

With the project "Marking the practice exam automatically with DevOps", the project leader, Mr. Nguyen Huy Thuc said, "Nowadays, in most universities, there are limited numbers of automatically supporting systems to evaluate the practice test”. Most schools use the traditional marking method in which students submit projects and lecturers evaluate them by interviewing students and verifying their projects. 

Interface design of the project "Marking practice exam automatically with DevOps"

Project Leader - Huy Thuc said that applying the traditional marking method mentioned above has many disadvantages. Accordingly, students must expect to see their results after submitting the test for a long time. At the same time, lecturers must evaluate students' tests manually. With a manual assessment, based on people, the instructor must perform all stages such as collecting data and assessing each entry one by one. Manually marking multiple exams manually is not only time-consuming, it is also making it easy to overlook a number of factors, carelessness or cause negative feelings for lecturers while evaluating students' work.

With the urge to solve such limitations of the traditional, manual method of marking projects, the group decided to select the topic "Marking practice exam automatically with DevOps". Sharing about the expectation of successful implementation in real life, Thuc said the group's idea was very positive. Previously, the group system had been combined with several FPTU field systems and had quite positive results. In the short term, the group expects that the application will become part of the FPTU grading system. In the long term, the team hopes to develop it for many other universities.

"The project "Marking practice exam automatically with DevOps" really solves many issues of fairness in the test, and also reduces a lot of time and effort for both students and lecturers ”, Thuc said.

“At present, the product is stably completed and can be used with subjects in our school such as Java Web, Java, C Sharp, C courses. The product has been supported by Mr. Kieu Trong Khanh to mark papers on real classes and verify the results”, Thuc added. For the first time, the experience of making online projects, from meeting to discuss requirements to reviewing, everything was online, it was quite a special experience for the team "Marking practice exam automatically with DevOps" in this Capstone period.  

Application of FPTU HCM Academic Portal

Participating in the thesis defense with a project aiming for education, "Application of FPTU HCM Academic Portal" is expected to bring many practical benefits for FPT students. Le Cong Hoan, the leader of the team had a few words to reveal before the project officially entered the capstone process.

Demographic images of the project Telephone application FPTU HCM Academic Porta’s design

Sharing about the "origin" of the project "Designing mobile phone application FPT University Academic Portal (FAP)", Hoan said this idea came to the group quite randomly. While we were wondering between many topics, the idea of making FAP suddenly appeared. So the group agreed and started working on it right away. "I realized that almost every university has its own app, but ours still doesn't have one, so because of our love for FPTU, we have implemented it," Hoan said.

Equipped with many features to serve students' interests, the FAP project establishes a link to the school's departments. This is the basis to support the students in the fastest and most convenient way.

Initially, the team outlined that the project will have 3 phases. Phase 1 is for students. Phase 2 is for school officials and lecturers. Stage 3 is for parents. “But because the time was limited and the workload was too much, our team only completed phase 1 for the graduation project. Hopefully in the future, our team will work with the school to add two more stages so that the project can be completed as expected, ”said team leader - Le Cong Hoan.

Hoan also said that the team takes great care of the UI and UX of the app. In particular, the group screened and gathered practical opinions from FPT University students through the surveys. The team then deployed the right content as well as the most necessary features to put into the app, so that it is effective in serving students.

In terms of app functionality, the team is adding a lot of new features as well as integrating the features available on the FAP website. For example, users can immediately track the class schedule on the homepage. In addition, the app will open a page informing news about events, workshops and clubs. In addition, FAP also features notifications related to changes in the schedule, examinations, classroom, etc.

Up to now, the main contents of the mobile application "FPT University Academic Portal” has basically been completed. If the project is put into practice, the team hopes to be able to add more features for the app as well as deployment for the next stage”, Hoan said.

This is the final project of students’ life, the team put a lot of expectation into the product. They hopes that the product will be widely used by the next generation students, for the purpose of facilitating their learning process better, faster and more conveniently. From the product itself (UI, UX), the team has meticulously prepared the TVC's app presentation. We can easily see the high enthusiasm of the students for their project. "Hope everything will work out successfully", Hoan wished.  

Establishing attendance checking system with IP cameras

Another project, "Establishing attendance checking system with IP camera", also focused on improving the application of technology in the field of education.

Realizing that lecturers have difficulty in taking attendance for which the main problem comes from the relatively slow internet speed; from the moment the school installed a classroom surveillance camera, the students thought that the cameras could be used for more than just monitoring and supervising, especially in today's industry 4.0.

Project’s interface of Establishing attendance system with IP camera

“At first, the whole team tried to do research and gradually approach face recognition technology, but at that time everything was only theoretical. Our hearts began to sing with joy when the school appeared more AI-related capstone topics, including the topic of establishing an IP Camera attendance checking system from Mr. Kieu Trong Khanh and Mr. Doan Nguyen Thanh Hoa. After discussing the topic, everyone showed an interest in the topic, and the ASIC team (Attendance System with IP Camera) was born…” shared Nguyen Dinh Phu, representative of the ASIC team.

To optimize the project's efficiency, the members of the team spent a lot of time on system research and development. Accordingly, in order to solve outstanding problems in existing systems, the team divided into surveying and analyzing the advantages, offering solutions to deal with the limitations of those systems, while researching technology to develop the system to the best possible extent.

After 4 months of working with the group, the product was able to perform the two most important functions: checking attendance for each person and for a group of people. In addition, the functions to support students to keep track their attendance and lectures to export attendance results for reusing at other systems are also being improved.

Speaking of the difference compared to similar products available on the market, ASIC team’s representative said, “Most other similar products need an Internet connection when using. However, our system does not. The application will be installed on the instructor's machine and take attendance without using the Internet.”.

Right from the first days of the project, the team always wanted their projects to be implemented in reality. “If it were applied and implemented in reality, it would be a huge joy for the team, because any developer is looking forward to seeing their spiritual child to be well received and used for its original purpose. The team hopes to receive many contributions in the process of using it and is ready to acknowledge and continuously develop for further improvement in the system” Dinh Phu said.

After a period being separated of the team with the help of Ms. Vy, ASIC team with the project "Establishing attendance checking system with IP camera" as well as the teams with the project "Marking the practice exam automatically with DevOps" and "Application of FPTU HCM Academic Portal" are getting ready to step into the challenge to defend their passionate products.

Wish for all the teams who make the capstone project with educational field are confident to enter the important moment of senior students!  

 HOANG NHUNG

Translated by TRONG HIEU