As students, Jurgen Beliën and Roderick Trompert were frustrated with what they describe as clutter in information distribution for TU students. They wanted to develop a single portal where students could access personal information, grades, course enrollment and more.
Delen
“There are so many different websites with different layouts and sometimes duplicate information,” said Trompert. “You don’t know which is the most current or accurate.” Beliën agreed and added, “It makes no sense, especially since TU is a technical university. There is no reason why we can’t do it right.”
The project involves combining information from different sources, including Syllabus, Blackboard, and Osiris. The challenge is that these systems do not “expose” their data uniformly. “All these systems are actually running services that we now have to query individually, and as a student via isolated web pages,” says Beliën. “The API (Application Programming Interface) will be used to serve as an abstraction to these systems, giving back results in a uniform manner.”
The final design and programming of the front-end is being done by Blinq Systems, while the API back-end is being done by SSC-ICT. By building the portal as a responsive website, students can always access their information using the same web address and will have an optimized experience regardless of the device.
The first phase of the project is expected go live by December. This phase will allow students to read and access their personalized information. The team will collect feedback from students and evaluate their ideas for the next phase. Phase two would allow students to input data such as registering for classes.
Comments are closed.