Future functionality

April 30, 2015April 30, 2015Niko Leave a comment

Version 1 of ‘LessonPlan’ will be released as a full functioning platform, but due to time constraints more advanced features will be implemented in future versions.
Some of the planned features are detailed below. The extra features simplify and make more robust some of the functionality of the platform, but all said functionality is completely operational in version 1 without them.

Suggestion algorithm
One of the main goals of ‘LessonPlan’ is to facilitate module selection, allowing students to make more informed choices when selecting optional modules. This is based on the premise that providing students with information apart from the limited details of the module overview pages – and especially feedback on the practical applications of the module descriptions – will allow them to have a clearer picture of the module’s learning outcomes and requirements. In the initial release of the platform this is largely based on the inferences that each student can make from the feedback, comments and discussions that other students have posted. Implementing a suggestion algorithm would offer some automation on this task: The algorithm will be able to notice patterns in module selection and relate them to satisfaction. It will then be able to offer those observations as suggestions. For example, if a student A has rated Module X and Module Y as very interesting in Semester 1, and rates Module Z as very interesting in Semester 2, there’s a probability that students that have also found Modules X and Y interesting will have an interest in Module Z as well.

Posts’ ratings
As detailed in the post about Trust here, implementation of ratings for comments and discussion posts is intended in the future. This would allow users to up-vote a post that they found particularly helpful, useful or interesting. That would provide new users with an instant indication about the validity of the post, while encouraging users to post more responsibly.

Flags for abusive content
For the initial release of ‘LessonPlan’ it was decided that no active monitoring or moderation of posts was needed to keep content clean and clear. From studies of Graph Theory on Online Social Networks it has been noted that an accentuated characteristic of a network shapes the behaviour of its members. Since members of the platform will be University students, with their credentials logged into the system, it is a safe assumption that the majority of them will behave ethically, in line with the Acceptable Use policies. This then, as a network effect, constrain potentially deviant behaviour from other members. This assumption is re-enforced by what is detailed in the post about Trust: Where social capital and trust exist, members can rely on informal fairness rather than constant active monitoring and exhausting rules of provenance.
Nevertheless, future versions of ‘LessonPlan’ can address this issue if need be. The feature will allow users to flag up abusive posts. Posts that gather a certain amount of flags, will be marked for inspection. And after a certain amount of flagged up posts, prevention policies could be set in place (for example, warnings, suspension or even deletion from the system).

Cost Breakdown

April 15, 2015April 30, 2015Sam Leave a comment

Running costs of Lessonplan are predicted to be rather low. Primary costs will be time spent creating the system, the the time spent installing it at customer universities and any relevant support related costs.

Our service will be offered to numerous universities across the UK (for now) as a white label software solution. It is a web-application that will need to be hosted on web servers.

Two options will exist for client universities: hosting on their existing servers or an external provider. The latter will cost more for the university but will not cost any extra for us. Both of these options cost us nothing. If the customer wishes for us to provide external hosting, we will use a cloud server from DigitalOcean at a cost of £52 per month (all of which is forwarded to the customer).

Because we are a team containing web developers, the development costs will be very low, we will be using open source frameworks rather than proprietary software to develop the product. We also anticipate that support for the system will be minimal due to a test driven design methodology, designed to minimise the number of bugs that make it into production installations. Once the product is developed however, running costs drop off significantly further and the profit increases exponentially as we roll the system out to more universities very cheaply (with a typical set-up time of 6 man hours).

We don’t require any office space as we can work remotely and communicate via Skype and project management platforms such as Trello.

We may invest variable amounts of money in marketing the platform. This will involve travelling for meetings at potential universities to discuss our solution. This figure could range anywhere from £30 to £150 per visit.

We expect universities themselves will promote the use of the system by their students once they have purchased it. This negates any cost for us to perform this promotion ourselves.

Project Management

April 1, 2015April 30, 2015Sam Leave a comment

Strong project management is key to any successful business. From the outset we’ve used the best tools at our disposal so that everyone remains on track and productive.

Most of the design and marketing tasks were listed in Trello, a project management board provider. Using this board we have been able to list tasks that need doing, assign ourselves to them, and update them as they progress through “in progress”, “review” and “complete” stages.

A view of our Trello board.

For the software development aspect of our project, we will be using an Agile methodology, namely Scrum. Scrum was chosen as it allows us to work independently and at a fast pace. Ideas can be iterated over quickly and regular meetings amongst team members ensure the project as a whole remains on track.

We also use a Facebook group to communicate. Facebook provides notifications for events and updates within the group that all members can see and respond to quickly and easily.