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The development of Academic Services Mobile application for UUM

Abstract
Students can face difficulties in their research work due to lack of communication or interaction
with lecturers. Development of mobile application can make easy and comfortable access of
teachers and students to the announcements and other related information regarding courses
quizzes and make the interaction of students and teachers possible on a single platform, while
using mobile application. The concise and comprehensive objectives of this study is to identify
the different features, usage, advantages of the academic service mobile phone application and
To examine the effect of academic service mobile phone application usage and performance of
the students. The study requires a deep analysis regarding use of mobile application in academic
services as what kind of survey is needed to specify the content development of the application.
To achieve the goals of study, the General Research Design Methodology (GRDM) is proposed.
General research design methodology steps are; awareness of problem, suggestion, development,
evaluation, and conclusion. With the implementation of the academic service mobile phone
application in the University Utara Malaysia (UUM), the research culture can be enhanced and
developed as there would be no more communication barriers among teachers and students. The
proposed study can have its multifunctional significance as that the development of academic
service mobile phone application has become a requirement. The developments of such technical
applications address the gap persisting in the field of technology to solve the current issues of the
advancing academic fields. Universities have the prospect to extend new types of services to
users of mobile devices and to develop mobile android applications.

1.0 Introduction
The use of technology is increasing day by day we all depend on technology and use various
technologies to accomplish specific tasks in our lives. Today we have various emerging
technologies which impact our lives in different ways. Technology is being implemented in
almost every section of our lives and business structures. As the world keeps developing,
technology will be changed, what is working today might not work not be efficient tomorrow. So
it is better to stay up to date with new emerging technologies and learn how to embrace and use
them in your daily life. Growth of mobile phone applications requires the capability to provide

the services where and when needed, in this context development of mobile phone application
can be the solution of the problems. Mobile phone applications are the resultant of technological
advancement [1].
The resultant of technological advancement comes along with many other uses of mobile phone
applications as in commerce [2]. Today, technology has made a very big change in the education
world, with the invention of technological gadgets and mobile apps which helps students learn
easily. Nowadays one can access a full library via a mobile app on any smart phone or ipad.
Before inventing this technology, students had to go to physical libraries to get the information
they needed. Academic Technology Services provides academic technology platforms for use
across the university, and academic and scholarly technology consulting, development and
support for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
In the same way, Mobile phones application is an end user service, end user services are targeted
toward individual users and small groups. For robust, there are many supporting technologies i.e.
departmental solutions in hosting, backup, storage, network support or other enterprise services.
In the present age of information, different apps for education has been developed.
To provide above services, academic technology team identifies and facilitate the adoption of
emerging technologies that advance teaching, learning and research. The study will review and
test a wide range of technologies that enable faculty and students to be more creative and
collaborative to achieve learning goals both inside and outside the traditional classroom.

1.1 Problem Statement

The proposed study will create an android application which will enable students and teachers to
interact with each other directly. Students will not be facing communication gap and will be able
to know all important events advertised by the university.
Furthermore, all important news announcements made by teachers can be directly communicated
to their students by using android mobile phone application. Technological application based on
android operating system of mobile phone can be useful in multiple fields and dimensions
including health care and education depending upon the requisite of the situation [3].
The proposed android application will be providing following facilities displaying on its
interface:

o Courses
o Announcements
o Quizzes
o Academic calendar
o Chat room
Updated information regarding courses, announcements and quizzes is not readily available on
university website and platform. These services are difficult to handle on individual basis as can
not addressed on university portal as that of separate teacher-student entity. So development of
mobile application for these services becomes desirable.

1.2 Research Questions

The stated problem give raise the following question to be answered in the proposed research:
1.1 What will be the features of academic service mobile application?
1.2 How academic service mobile phone application can be used in the best benefit of the
PHD doctors and students?
1.3 What academic services can be provided through mobile phone application?
1.4 How academic service mobile application can be used by the student and teachers?
1.5 What impact can be on the performance of student regarding the implementation of
academic service mobile phone application?

2.0 Literature Review:

Use of technology and mobile applications in every field of life either in commercial or social
has become a necessity in the present era. The growing trends of technology usage in higher
education sector giving leverage to research students to meet the challenges of the 21 st century in
a dynamic environment. The academic services are provided with mobile interface including
different events in the campus, sports, courses and other curriculum and extra curriculum
activities which can be beneficial for the students in one way or the other. [4]. The Internet of
Things (IoT) is another approach to meet the requirements of time.
There is a concept in subject of information technology known as Internet of things this
concept has been implied in different sectors including health education and transportation.

Information era has blessed the world with wireless technology, where devices are free from
boundaries [5]. The advancement can be in the form of speed, requirements and preferences etc.

In the past this kind of work has been seen in the field of technology. The university asked the
students and faculty about their problem regarding study and uses their feedback in developing a
mobile application.
The study suggested that academic services mobile phone applications can be used to give
assignments, quiz etc. on applications. It has been found that task gave on mobile applications is
faster, and alongside momentous accuracy. The study additionally finished that requests on
mobile devices might be projected to enhance by upholding the use of imagination to line up real
and adjacent content [5]. In the study, an academic kit was developed to help the students of
Computer Science (CS) and engineering curriculums for universities globally. The study stuff
took a mobile approach to teach CS content on java and blackberry application [6] a student
interface of the stated application can be viewed as follows:

The picture is showing an assignment (left-side) giving to student on academic kit stated above.
The right-side of picture is showing a quiz taken on academic mobile kit.

There has been an explosive growth in the area of mobile communications in the last few years.
Today nearly 5 billion people use a mobile phone whereas about 3 billion live in developing
countries [7].
A case discover aimed at recognizing user necessities of mobile phone users living in
Kyrgyzstan. In the study they recognized a tenable mobile phone product concept, developed a
working prototype of the idea and presented a little usability testing. The procedure gave in this
work can be utilized as a guideline to develop user-centered resolutions for disparate kinds of
users, encompassing those living in growing states [8].
Previously robots have been used for industrial manufacturing applications, although emerging
areas in medical, space, security and service applications are gaining energy in the recent years.
Now, it is also common in academic community. Smart phones has significant role in attracting
and inspiring the students for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
education [9].
Information-intensive university cooperate an important role in making a successful eco-system
that can completely allow the university management, academic staff members, researchers and
students. This can be achieved through adaptive, personalized, context-aware information
dissemination program tool. The study presented a novel application of smart location based
services for developing a smart university Geographic Information System (GIS) solution based
on mobile and wireless network technologies. This approach allowed users to conduct search at
the university campus based on GIS as well as supporting the regular search to identify
researchers and departmental Information content, activities, projects, services, tools, knowledge,
events, etc. This approach described in the study combined users mobility, including their
location, selected keyword search to determine researchers and departments profile. Global
Positioning System (GPS) provided an easy and flexible solution for establishing a social and
professional network among university researchers and stakeholders [10].
Academic services through mobile applications not only serve to mitigate the communication
barriers but also provide an interactive learning environment to the students collaboration with
teachers via mobile phone application. It relies on mobile contact knowledge and wireless

contact web of education to accomplish resources and educational services transmission, In

Mobile teaching and discovering interactive hobbies across mobile computing technology [11].
Students setbacks considering sequences can be catered across online mobile request that faces
difficulty in asking setbacks in front of supplementary students as in the class. The sequence
focuses on how the mobility of users and mechanisms affects webs, arrangements, and
applications. The sequence considers mobilitys impact on several layers of the protocol stack,
from medium admission manipulation to applications [12].

3.1 Methodology: This research basically focuses on the development of Mobile application
to assist the academic services of university Utara Malaysia. Certain measures in the
development of the system model are going to be considered. The five main phases of this design
methodology are involved:
awareness of problem, suggestion, development, evaluation, and conclusion. This is shown in
Figure 1.

Fig. 1: General Research Design Methodology

Development process can be divided into four phases:

I.
II.
III.

Development of initial prototype

Use the prototype
Enhance the operational prototype

In the first phase prototype is built with the help of gathered data and diagrams. The users are
made familiar with the design; design can be made flexible according to the users requirement.
In second phase of prototype development, the potential users who can point out the positive and
negatives of the application analyze the product and give their suggestion to add or remove the
features of the application. In third phase of the prototype development, the design is updated
according to the needs and assessment of the users and an operationally enhanced prototype is
developed for final implementation. Last step in the design research method is the evaluation. It
is of extreme significance in the methodology. It makes the researcher aware of the problems in
the product that what drawbacks are there in the product which can be removed or justified. In
this regard, a survey can be performed to investigate the specification of the product (academic
service mobile application) that it fulfill the expectation or not. Structured interviews can be
conducted with teachers and student regarding the use and applicability of the product.
Statistical Analysis: The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 used to
achieve descriptive statistical analysis for the collected data.
Table : Discriptive Statistics for general information (First Part)
Gender
Valid

Age

School

Category

20

20

20

20

Mean

1.40

2.90

1.55

2.55

Std. Deviation

.503

1.119

.759

1.099

Minimum

Maximum

N
Missing

Table : Gender of participants

Gender

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative
Percent

Male

12

60.0

60.0

60.0

40.0

40.0

100.0

Valid
Female

Total

20

100.0

100.0

Table : Age of participants

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative
Percent

Valid

<20

15.0

15.0

15.0

20-29

20.0

20.0

35.0

30-39

25.0

25.0

60.0

>40

40.0

40.0

100.0

Total

20

100.0

100.0

Table : School of participants

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative
Percent

CAS

12

60.0

60.0

60.0

COB

25.0

25.0

85.0

COLGIS

15.0

15.0

100.0

20

100.0

100.0

Valid
Total

Table : Category of participants

Frequency

Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative
Percent

Valid

Lecturer

25.0

25.0

25.0

PhD Student

15.0

15.0

40.0

Master Student

40.0

40.0

80.0

Undergraduate Student

20.0

20.0

100.0

20

100.0

100.0

Total

According to the Tables5.1 that shown: mean, standard deviation, minimum value and maximum value
for the gender, age, school, category for the participants, and according to the Table(5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5) that
shown: 12 (60%) male and 8 (40%) were female, and most of them 12 (60%) student in CAS School. We
can observe that most of the students 8 (40%) are master students and 13 (65%) student age greater than
30.

Conclusion: As discussed in chapter one, the objectives of the present study is the development
of Mobile Application for Academic Services particularly in University Utara Malaysia and the
testing of its usability and functionality to comprehend further requirements.The researcher has
applied UML diagrams consisting of Use Case specification, Use Case diagram, Activity
diagram, Sequence diagram and collaboration diagram in the system design to explain the
research objectives. Moreover, evaluation of the prototype and confirmation of its outcome was
carried out and it can be stated that the application is proven to be invaluable for users (Students
and Lecturers) as it assists them to interact with each others. The application was developed on
the basis of the users' requirements.
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