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DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION PLATFORM BY

INTEGRATING WEB AND ANDROID TECHNOLOGIES

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Sci.Int.(Lahore),28(4),3789-3794,2016 ISSN 1013-5316;CODEN: SINTE 8 3789

DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION PLATFORM BY

INTEGRATING WEB AND ANDROID TECHNOLOGIES
S. Butt, M. Anjum, M. Rehman
Department of Computer Science Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan.
[email protected]
ABSTRACT: The process of accessing admission information from different universities is very tedious for prospective
applicants due to time and geographical constraints. Applicants living in distant cities, villages and towns find it hard to
receive timely information about admissions and endure transport problems while visiting universities in Pakistan. To address
this issue, an efficient and reliable system is required that could provide up-to-date information to prospective students at their
own locations. Therefore, in this research, an integrated admission news system using Android and Web technologies has been
proposed. A multi-method technique is employed by combining surveys with experiment. A pre-experiment survey is conducted
with the university students for need analysis and also to generate themes for the designed application. The post-experiment
survey is employed to evaluate the usability of the developed application. By using both technologies, the proposed platform
complements the limitation of individual technology and help users having access to these technologies. The post-experiment
survey responses shows that more than 80% users found system effective, efficient, easy to use and memorize. Since, responses
are collected from undergraduate and graduate students. Therefore, the proposed system could be considered a facilitating
platform for prospective students seeking admissions in universities.

Keywords: Content Management System, Mobile Widget, Android, Web Application, Admission Information Delivery

INTRODUCTION is available online and on android platform to provide

Information systems are important to facilitate users in timely information about admission dates, required documents,
access to up-to-date information in various fields of life that office timings, admission criteria and university’s
include and not limited to e-health [1], e-agriculture [2], e- geographical location. The web service in the form of Rich
learning [3], and social media [4]. The information systems Site Summary RSS feed being used to update data from
are critical in the environment where resources are limited NewzNinja web application to mobile. NewzNinja aims to
and long distances are involved to reach to particular minimize the t i m e and difficulty faced by prospective
information centre [5]. This situation is very common in students in accessing admission information of the institute of
developing countries and Pakistan is also no exception. their choice. The areas where internet facilities are limited,
According to [6] apart from well-developed cities such as mobile application has the ability to retain information.
Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta, the availability of Therefore, users can access all necessary information offline
resources is quite limited in small cities, towns and remote without worrying about internet facility.
areas of Pakistan. To facilitate the population living in these
areas, there is a need to develop information system that can MATERIALS AND METHODS
provide timely and updated information about events, The multi-method research strategy was adopted by
incidents, health care, disasters and education [7]. combining observational and experimental research methods,
At the time of university admissions, information is with the aim that the quality of the diverse techniques
disseminated through various sources that include supplemented one another and provided rigorous results. The
newspapers, university websites and social networking sites. research process designed is shown in Figure 1. At first,
However, information provided through these sources has a relevant literature was collected from well-known digital
number of limitations. Firstly, information is not updated in databases that included Institute of Electrical and Electronics
time, secondly information is incomplete in rare cases Engineers IEEE, Association for Computing Machinery
information about complete admission procedure is available, ACM and Science Direct. In the next step, a survey was
and thirdly internet facility is not accessible to everyone [7]. conducted in five universities of Lahore which is second
Newspapers have become the most accessible source largest and developed city of Pakistan.
however, only key admission dates are advertised which are The selection of university and participants were made by
not sufficient for prospective students to make decisions. employing convenience sampling. The universities included
Since public and private universities are located in developed for survey were Lahore College for Women University
cities therefore, prospective students have to travel to these LCWU, National University of Computer and Emerging
studies to access relevant information. Sciences FAST-NU, Punjab University PU, University of
This research is conducted to facilitate prospective students Engineering and Technology UET and Institute of
who are facing difficulties in receiving admission Information Technology CIIT also known as COMSATS to
information due to geographical constraints and limited identify issues faced by students during admission process.
internet facilities. The research has proposed integrated news The time period to conduct survey was selected carefully to
platform named as NewzNinja to keeps track of admission include participants who were seeking admission in the
information of v a r i o u s universities o f Lahore. The system selected universities and were going

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information in a relatively brief time period with low cost to
researchers.
The pre-experimental survey addressed two purposes. The
first purpose was to examine the perception and need
requirements of selected samples regarding the improvement
and flaws of the existing admission system deployed in the
universities. The second purpose was to collect data from
students regarding their preferred way of receiving admission
information besides the current way of receiving information
by visiting university campuses.
The post-experimental survey was to verify that the
developed system had fulfilled user needs. The pre-
experiment survey instrument was divided into three sections.
In the first section, demographic information was collected.
In the second section, questions were asked about mobile and
web technologies as a tool to provide information at to What
were the problems faced by students while taking admission
in universities. What were the lacking features in the existing
system that could be provided through technology. Also
would an integrated solution of mobile and web technologies
like the one proposed in this research be a better option.
A total of 31 responses were collected from pre-experimental
survey. The respondents were largely between the age group
of 17-20 years. In terms of gender, 42% respondents were
males and 58% were females. The qualification of
respondents largely fell under the category of under-
graduates.
In the survey, it was asked to explain all possible ways
adopted by respondents, while taking admission in their
degree programs. 39.3% of the participants used websites to
get information about the admission criteria; 28.6% preferred
to visit university campus; 28.6% of the participants
consulted newspapers; 3.6% used mobile applications and
60.7% respondents had to ask around from their friends or
relatives.
The statistical data revealed that in terms of technology use,
39.3% consulted websites, and rest relied on words of mouth,
and manual system. A very little percentage used mobile to
access information because there was no such mobile
application available. In an answer to a question was that
Figure 1: Research Design 60% people agreed that they needed a mobile application for
through admission process. The findings of this survey were getting admission updates while 40% said they need a
used to design system architecture for both web and mobile website for the same purpose.
applications. Prototypes of applications were presented to the When asked which device and type of mobile they used, 22%
students of selected universities and their responses were reported simple mobile, 35% used smart phones and rest had
collected after they performed various tasks in both the laptop or desktop PC facility. From these results it was
applications. Both applications were developed by employing evident that a use of a combination of technology would be a
the latest technologies. The developed applications were better solution to accommodate users of smart phones, and
evaluated by conducting usability survey. A five point Likert computer systems. Therefore, we adopted an integrated
scale was used to record users’ agreement against usability solution to facilitate both types of users. Also, mobile users
attributes which included effectiveness, efficiency, ease of were largely using android technology, therefore in our
use, learnability, and memorability of the system. application we focused on the same technology.
The stratified random sampling method was adopted to The respondents were further asked to share their experiences
collect data from the students of the selected universities, of taking admission in the universities of other cities. The
who wanted to share their admission procedure experience in responses collected from these questions helped to identify
the current institute and were willing to provide their features for the proposed application. One respondent shared
responses on the existing admission information system. The experience as ―The first and most hectic step is to track down
pre and post experimental survey was carried out through the admissions schedule of all favored universities.” Another
mailed surveys which was extremely efficient in providing respondent said ―After getting admission dates, it’s a vicious
cycle of paying multiple visits to every campus, first to
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Sci.Int.(Lahore),28(4),3789-3794,2016 ISSN 1013-5316;CODEN: SINTE 8 3791
receive forms, then gather required documents, a slight By considering these concerns, the research aimed to
mistake can cause lot of rework and more visits, and then facilitate prospective students in receiving accurate and
going to submit them and give the entry test if applicable.” timely university admission information through an
The problems highlighted by respondents regarding integrated platform consisting of web and mobile
admission system in pre-experiment survey are listed below. applications. The platform was named as NewzNinja whose
• The information about admission process provided on web application is available online at www.newzninja.com.
university websites or by the administration office was The platform architecture is shown in Figure 2.
incomplete or unclear that caused prospective students to
make mistakes in their admission forms.
• Due to incomplete information of admission process
prospective students had to travel back and forth between
cities to have their documents completed and submitted.
• Had to wait in long queues in universities days leading to
the admission deadline. This caused prospective students to
stay away from home town for days and to pay additional
expenses for accommodation.
It was asked what type of information they would like to
receive if admission information was provided through
websites and mobile application. The applicants responded by
providing their suggestions such as the application should be
easily accessible, information should be provided about
opening and closing dates, criteria to get admission, office
timings, university map and routes, degree programs,
university achievements and ranking, merits lists, entry test
information, and online submission of admission form and
fee submission.
From pre-experiment survey, following features were
identified to develop an integrated platform discussed in this Figure 2: NewzNinja Platform Architecture
research to serve the needs of prospective students.
a) To ensure availability of university admission information The data was updated at NewzNinja server where application
on website and mobile application. schema was available. The information stored in database at
b) Availability of University route map on both applications. server side was displayed on the web interface by connecting
c) List of documents needed for admission and office MYSQL database with website.
timings. The information available on the website was also made
d) Official website links and information from newspaper. available on the android widget application. For this, RSS
This need was not identified from the survey however, we feed was used to send data to mobile application. XML web
incorporated this feature to increase the reliability of the service was parsed to extract news from the website. A
information provided through our proposed platform. method was implemented that referenced the website, created
local view, parsed the fetched news into titles through
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .getName(). The following code was executed in mobile
A pre-experiment survey was conducted with students application as an asynchronous task (XML pull parser) and it
enrolled in five different the universities of Lahore, to is initiated to receive the RSS feed.
identify the problems they face while taking admission in the public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
universities. The key findings of the survey highlighteded super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
two major issues described below. // Set view
setContentView(R.layout.main);
 Delayed information about opening and closing dates of
// Set reference to this activity
admission in different universities made students either to
local = this;
enroll in an institution which was not their first preference
GetRSSDataTask task = new GetRSSDataTask();
or failed to secure admission at all.
// Start download RSS task
 The admission process varied in different universities and
task.execute("http://newzninja.com/feed/");
it was hard to acquire details about the whole procedure.
// Debug the thread name
Since the applicants belonged to various regions in
Log.d("NewzninjaRssReader",
Pakistan therefore, they were not well aware of the
Thread.currentThread().getName());
location of the university and the city itself. They found it
}
difficult to locate universities which were spread across the
A click listener was created to take the user to the official
city including transportation system. Further, these visits to
source of the news.
universities caused additional financial load which
The purpose of creating a link between news on mobile view
included not only traveling but also staying in the city until
and an official source was to create feeling of satisfaction in
the procedure was completed.
the users that they were accessing correct and updated news.
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3792 ISSN 1013-5316;CODEN: SINTE 8 Sci.Int.(Lahore),28(4),3789-3794,2016
The benefit of using RSS feed was that same information was Figure 6. In Figure 5, news updates are shown along with the
available on website and mobile application. This reduced the facility to view each university news in a separate tab. In
chances of inconsistencies in both applications. Figure 6 interface settings were provided for the users.
The system also provided the facility of map to locate
university campuses. The map was connected through Google
API v2. In mobile application, data was stored in mobile
local database using SQLLite database tool. A similar
approach was used where news were collected from different
news portals and made available to the end user devices [8].
In a study by [9] employed RSS feed to send courses and lab
related announcements to students through mobile devices.
Their technique was considered time saving and paper free
when survey was conducted to evaluate its usage. The benefit
of integrated application was that user could access updated
information through applications which were convenient way
for the user. Further, mobile application helped user to retain Figure 4: Map to reach desired university
information in the situation when internet facility was not
available. The widget application was especially developed
by considering under privileged cities where WIFI facility
was not available 24/7 hours a day.
Newzninja Website was developed in Wordpress CMS. The
website provided features that included information about
five universities with their official website links, newspaper
advertisements, maps, blogs, and subscription option for
users. In Figure 3, the website homepage showed posts in
order of latest updates. The menu bar showed links to the
different university’s pages and options provided by the
website. User could select a university from the drop down
menu or select a headline to go to the desired university page.

Figure 5: University News UI and Application Settings UI

Further, application provided a list of documents required at
the time of admissions. User could switch between the news
feed and the documents through the navigation drawer. User
can change the theme of the application, checkbox widget
title, radio button widget title in setting option. Finally, User
can see the location of the university through map.
The purpose of NewzNinja was to manage information of
various universities in the city of Lahore and disseminate this
information through web and mobile applications. Therefore,
Figure 3: NEWSNINJA Homepage
proposed platform provided information about admission
The university pages showed admission updates and other
criteria, required documents, office timings, link to official
news related to that university. The user could browse the
website and merit of different institutions on a single
archives of required university by selecting the headlines on
platform. Google maps integrated in web and mobile
the homepage or selecting the university from the drop down
applications provided facility to view city map and the map
menu. The university map is shown in Figure 4 which
of specific university. The feature of Google Map was not
provided locations of university campuses in Lahore. The
available in any university’s official website.
user could enter his location to get shortest distance to the
In the existing studies, we could not find application similar
university.
to that discussed in this research. Though various applications
The blog page on the website provided posts on the website
were proposed by authors but their purpose and available
with latest one on the top. User could find the latest posted
features were largely specific to one institute. Aydınoğlu
information on the website in this page, without selecting any
[10], developed Geological Information System GIS to
particular university.
provide location of university campuses and
The android application downloads the news feed from
departments. Malalha [11], proposed application developed in
website, providing office timings of universities and online
JSP and mySQL that provided features such as online
documents required for admission purpose. It also provided a
admission, interviews, form collection and fee submission. In
map for the universities’ location by using Google APIs. The
a study [12] developed application in HTML to store records
mobile application interfaces are shown in Figure 5 and
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Sci.Int.(Lahore),28(4),3789-3794,2016 ISSN 1013-5316;CODEN: SINTE 8 3793
of student academic career, batch number, courses and exam came from undergraduate students and 44% from graduate
results. Sankaranarayanan and Cox [13], proposed an students. The survey responses are discussed in Table 1.
android based application by using agents. The software Table 1: Usability attributes and respondents’ level of
agents helped in finding most suitable university by matching agreement
user criteria with available university information. Balasaheb The responses showed that more than 80% users found
et al., [14] developed web based application to facilitate system effective, efficient, easy to use and remember. Since,
students to take online admission. When compared to these responses were collected from undergraduate and graduate
studies, our proposed platform was significantly different in students therefore, our proposed system could be considered
terms of its objectives and the features developed in each facilitating platform for prospective students seeking
application. The platform addressed the needs of users by not admissions in universities.
only involving two different technologies, but also by
providing features that were needed by those living at far. CONCLUSION
Therefore, one could not find any study in the existing The objective of this research was to identify problems faced
literature that had provided features which could be compared by students in accessing admission information, proposed a
to those available in our platform. solution by developing and integrated application and
Therefore, to evaluate the usability of proposed platform and evaluate proposed model to verify its usability. The proposed
identify how far it fulfils user needs, a post-experimental solution provides efficient and reliable way to access
survey was conducted. The developed system was presented information about five different public and private sector
to individual users and they were asked to test the usability of universities in Lahore. The integrated platform facilitates
the proposed system. On the basis of their experience, they users to get online information through website and make this
provided their feedback thorough online survey information handy by using mobile application widget.
questionnaire. Through this way i.e. non-availability of internet to the users,
The survey consisted of six sections. First section was to users will still be able to access relevant information through
collect demographic information, and rest of the five sections mobile. In future, more features could be added to both
were designed to address usability attributes associated with applications such as shortest distance from major
the proposed application which included: effectiveness of the transportation places to university campuses and online
system, efficiency of the system, ease with which a software submission of admission forms. In this case, the proposed
application or product could be picked up and understood by platform will be used as intermediary or third party facilitator
the users, learnability of the system, and memorability of the where universities will be able to post information directly.
system.
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