Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz FHNW

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Career Info Days

Summary

We developed an application to invite, organize and allocate students for a career information day event which is held annually at the FMS school in Basel.

Key terms

Type of application:	Web application
Frontend:	Angular 9
Backend:	Java 11, Spring Boot, Hibernate
Cloud Server:	AWS - Amazon Web Services
Database:	PostgreSQL
Design:	Figma, Sketch
Collaboration Tools:	Gitlab, Confluence, Jira, MS Teams
Development Tools:	IntelliJ, Eclipse, VS Code

Project goal

Our goal was to digitize the complete process and get rid of the paper-based procedure to plan the career info days event. With our solution the students can make their choices online and an algorithm does the allocation according to their preferences. An automated confirmation mail and an export function for several lists creates further simplification for the administrator.

Thanks to a close cooperation between the client and our dedicated team, this goal was accomplished.

Initial situation

In the past, the entire event was organized in an entirely paper-based manner. The individual students had to write down and hand in their preferences on a piece of paper. The class teachers collected all the sign-up sheets and passed them on to the school administration. After that the school administrators of all participating schools came together and started to distribute the students to chosen events, trying to respect the chosen preferences of the student wherever possible. This allocation process alone took about two weeks' time, eventually producing lists with allocations per class, but without the students' names. The students then had to manually look up their serial number and copy their appointments from a communal class list.

Benefits of our solution

Our solution digitizes the whole process. This will provide a faster turnaround, easier handling and trackable results. The students are informed about the choice they made at all times and get notified by mail as soon as they are assigned to an event. The distribution of event allocation lists to lecturers and participating institutions is streamlined and allows the client to focus on other tasks. Because of the shorter timeframe spent with planning the event, the costs will reduce significantly.

Results

We created an application that runs in the cloud and is a low maintenance effort for the client.
A list of students can be imported from a .csv file and we are able to send individual invitations to all imported students.

After all students express their preferences — regarding on-site visitations and lectures — on a PC or mobile device, our algorithm quickly allocates them via predetermined criteria. The students' preferences are taken into account at all times, when assigning them to an event.

The application uses the well-established Google Material design framework and facilitates a simple-to-understand UI, which was developed closely with the customer.

Project data

The project began as IP3 in February 2020, but due to the COVID crisis needed to be paused until June 2020.
IP4 started in June 2020 and our team of 9 members worked very diligently until January 2021 to deliver a product that satisfied the client.

Effort in person hours for IP4: 1620h