Monday, September 30, 2019

Childrens Friendships And Learning In School Education Essay

I have chosen a research article which is Children ‘s Friendships and Learning in School: Cognitive Enhancement through Social Interaction? This article was written by Peter Kutnick from Education Research Centre, University of Brighton and Alison Kington from School of Education, University of Nottingham. The chief subject of this research article is cognitive development. Both of the authors did the research because they wanted to look into about kids ‘s societal dealingss, whether it can develop their mental and believing procedure or non. Besides, they besides wanted to place the effectivity of the cognitive undertakings on kids ‘s cognitive degree. Harmonizing to Kutnick and Kington, the of import thought of this research is to reexamine the issues of classroom-based friendship couplings ; the pupils will better their public presentation increasingly on a cognitive undertaking than familiarity coupling. For this issue, it besides considers some factors or grounds such as gender, age and kids ‘s degree of ability. Besides, it is besides to place the effectivity of the classroom-based friendship couplings among the pupils. In add-on, it is besides to look into the characteristics of school-based friendly relationship expressed by immature kids. The survey was undertaken in the summer term of the school twelvemonth. For the Science Reasoning Tasks ( SRTs ) , there were 72 kids from a primary school in west London carried out the undertakings. The school was obtaining from a assorted working and middle-class community, and catagorised as co-ed school. Besides, the participants were selected sociometrically, chiefly with regard to friendly relationship and twelvemonth in school which is Year 1, 3 and 5. In this undertaking, the kids were given opportunities to hold their ain couplings based on their age category in school every bit good as based on their experience in join forcesing. Couplings are represented friendly relationship ( versus familiarity ) , sex which are male and female couplings and their age ; kids in Years 1, 3 and 5 in the primary school. It besides represented their ability which each brace stand foring a high, in-between and low- confirmed by the instructor appraisal and based on national course of study E nglish and Mathematics criterions. In this article, the positive effects of friendly relationship on cognitive development are presented by two theoretical attacks. First is from Piagetian position. Doise & A ; Mugny ( 1971 ) and Perret-Clermont ( 1984 ) , stated that â€Å" the mutualness of equals working together on a common job allows them to decide differences between their positions, which enhances the cognitive apprehension of each kid ( whether through cognitive struggle, taging or other societal procedures ) . † In add-on, Piaget, 1932 asserted that â€Å" mutualness is assumed to take topographic point in concerted relationships. † In short, based on above, we can reason that different pupils have different thoughts and sentiments, so when this happened, they will discourse it together among themselves. For illustration, they may inquire inquiries like â€Å" why you province the thought? † and â€Å" how this thought is related to the undertaking? † Therefore, this struggle will assist them to better their cognitive degree. The 2nd theory is from Vygotsky. Harmonizing to Kutnick ( 2005 ) , Vygotsky accepted that â€Å" interpersonal relationships are necessary for the development of new cognition and accomplishments, and that it is choice relationships ( that integrate positions with trust and support ) that provide the ‘scaffold ‘ for cognitive sweetening † . Briefly, quality relationship is the chief support for cognitive sweetening. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used by Kutnick and Kington in this research. For quantitative method, it involved quasi-experimental design. The intents of the design are to measure mated public presentation on SRTs every bit good as to compare their public presentation based on friendly relationship and familiarity, gender and ability. Besides that, cognitive undertaking was involved in this research. To promote pupils ‘ engagement, the undertaking has to be hard to analyze, understand or work out. It besides must let the spouses to take a assortment of point of position and show the undertakings as a job. Furthermore, the undertakings must upon scientific discipline undertakings because as said by Howe & A ; Tolmic ( 2003 ) , â€Å" they involve concluding in a figure of cognitive countries ( e.g. substance, measure, proportionality ) † . NFER ( 1979 ) besides stated that â€Å" Age appropriate undertakings were selected and piloted from the Bankss of SRTs for the three Old ages degrees † . Actual undertakings used in this survey included SRT1 ( anticipation of H2O degree in a atilt jar ; perspective-based drawing and anticipation of way of a plumb line in a container when tilted ) ; and SRT2 ( volume and weightiness, preservation of affair, and drifting and droping ) . For qualitative method, it involved interview which had done after pupils completed the undertakings separately. The interview was focused on activities the pupils involved with friends and illustrations of the activities that they shared inside and outside school. During the interview, there were some inquiries that had been asked to them. The inquiries included the qualities of best friends, schoolroom and school activities undertaken with friends and activities undertaken with friends outside the school. The findings or the consequences of the survey see the paired and single degrees. So, for the mated consequence, it was found that the highest SRTs degree was performed by miss ‘s friendship couplings. Boys friendly relationship coupling performed at the lowest degree, while mid-SRTs degrees are shown by both male childs and girl familiarity couplings. These findings were consistent across Year degrees and ability degrees. For the interviews, it revealed that male and female friendly relationship braces were likely to take part in different types of activity, with misss being school-inclusive and boys being school-exclusive. However, there was some statement on recent literature sing to kids ‘s public presentation on cognitive undertakings. Harmonizing to Galton et Al ( 2003 ) , public presentation in this activity will necessitate choice relationships between students. This besides taking some researches to reason that friendly relationship grouping ( partner offing kids ) should be used more often within schoolrooms. In contrast, reappraisals of the friendly relationship literature besides identify that friendly relationship is non a unitary construct ; that there are developmental and relational fluctuations of friendly relationship, and that the look of friendship activities may be modified through culture- particularly gendered activity within civilizations. Wells define cognitive development as â€Å" the building of idea procedures, including memory, job resolution, and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to maturity. † Based on the research article, cognitive development of the pupils can be improved by societal interaction. The findings are applicable and utile for the instructors to use in the instruction and lesson in the schoolroom so that it will hike the pupils ‘ involvement in larning. For friendship-based couplings and groupings, it gives many benefits to the pupils when making undertakings. Basically, pupils are more prefer to hold brace work with friends that they are closed to. This is because they already know each other better and do non experience embarrass or shame to portion their ideas and thoughts when interact with them. They besides will take part more actively during the interaction and bask making the undertakings together. Teachers can evidently detect that they will hold better merchandises compared to the familiarity couplings. However, instructors should non allow pupils to merely make the undertakings based on friendly relationship and with the same individual all the clip. Teachers may exchange the couplings for every undertaking. The intent of making this is really to allow the pupils get to cognize other pupils in the schoolroom better, besides to further their relationships. So, when instructors do this often, they increasingly will acquire used to each other and will be able to work with another individual, even though they are non intimate. Besides that, when carry oning brace work, instructors should see pupils ‘ ability degree ; low, in-between and high. Teachers should non put pupils with the same ability together when making brace work undertaking. For illustration, do non allow low ability pupils working together because they are slow scholars. Teachers may detect that they will experience demotivated, will be left behind and the merchandise of the work is less quality when compared to the high ability couplings. Next, instructors may gain that the low ability couplings have lower public presentation when making undertaking. Conversely, if instructors put the pupils with different abilities together in a group, the high ability pupils will move as coachs which help the low ability pupils to understand the undertakings given. So, when they explain and discuss the undertakings together, the low ability pupils will experience comfy to inquire any inquiries together. Therefore, instructors should place pupils â⠂¬Ëœ ability, so that they can carry on effectual instruction and acquisition in order to heighten pupils ‘ cognitive development. Teachers excessively should promote their pupils to unite and mix with different sex during the couplings and groupings. It is good to unite male childs and misss for a undertaking, since male childs and misss have different degree of thought. Basically, misss are more industrious and more serious in their surveies compared to male childs who are more playful and do non truly concentrate in their surveies. When teacher blend them, male childs will be influenced by the misss ‘ properties and because of that, they are able to concentrate on their surveies alternatively of playing games or making unwanted things during the lessons. Furthermore, when they work together, they will derive each others ‘ cognition as male childs are excel in Mathematicss and Science topics compared to misss who are better in reading and composing competence particularly in linguistic communication topics. Hence, this will better pupils ‘ cognitive development. Besides concerted acquisition is other manner of learning attacks which helps to heighten pupils ‘ cognitive development. It can be defined as attacks to larning ( and learning ) which emphasise interaction between pupils and which foster concerted values ( John, 1995 ) . There are some illustrations of collaborating larning activities like saber saw, equal tutoring, brainstorming, function drama and job work outing which requires the pupils to construct up cooperation through group functions. Woolfolk ( cited in Webb & A ; Palinesar ( 1996 ) ) stated that concerted acquisition is â€Å" state of affairss where amplification, reading, account and debate are built-in to the activity of the group and where acquisition is supported by other persons. † When instructors apply this, it will advance concerted values and aid pupils to better their cognitive development. This besides helps the pupils to develop their positive attitudes and better their accomplishment in academic field. After completing the activities, there must be a follow up activity which reflects on what pupils have learnt. Besides, instructors might put them undertakings to be done in category or as prep. Capuzzi ( 2006 ) , asserted that â€Å" This may assist group members integrate acquisition and develop positions for the hereafter † when finishing prep given by instructors after the group ends. As instructors, to guarantee that both pair work and group work activities are effectual to the pupils in the acquisition, instructors must play their function as facilitator. Teachers merely give expressed instructions to them before get downing their couplings or groupings. Teachers must non spoon-feed them excessively, but allow them responsible for their ain acquisition, so that they will go independent scholar and pattern student-centered acquisition manner. Capuzzi ( cited in Kelman ( 1963 ) ) proposed that group work assisting members to get the better of feelings of isolation, develop hope for increased accommodation, learn to accept duty, develop new relationship accomplishments and heighten committedness to alter. In add-on, during the undertakings or activities, instructors have to supply inquiries or undertakings that can develop pupils to react right every bit good as which can ease pupils ‘ cognitive development. The inquiries besides must hold different degree of trouble which can dispute their thought. When pupils are instructed to happen the replies, they will discourse the inquiries and interact by reasoning their ain thoughts to happen the right replies. So, when pupils are actively take parting in the undertakings, they will portion the pre-requisite cognition among them and at the same clip construct up their cognition. There will be collaborative acquisition and concerted interactions between the pupils excessively. As a decision, cognitive development engages the pupils in the procedure of deriving information. It besides requires pupils to collaborate and interact each others to happen solutions to jobs. These cooperation and interaction will do the pupils to bask larning and they will look frontward to larning the topic. Besides, they will increasingly better in their academic public presentation and they will go originative and critical pupils. For instructors, their instructions will be effectual and this will make enthusiasm for learning the pupils. In add-on, it will hike instructors ‘ self-pride because effectual instruction takes topographic point in the schoolroom.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Blood Brothers evaluation Essay

The performance was melodramatic with big hand gestures and with altered voices. Being melodramatic and the big gestures made it clearer to see what was happening on stage especially as the audience was seated so far away from the actions of the characters. The narrative was set in an old road in Liverpool with Liverpudlian accents, so the actors altered their voices to cockney accents to create a believable setting. The staging was well thought out because the stage was narrow and the seats were plotted around the stage with three floors and lots of seating. It had a rich and luxurious feeling to it and the audience must have felt the same way too, especially with the binoculars built into the seats. The cyclorama (hanging cloth/sky cloth) had a big affect on the audience because it created an illusion of stars and night, which is not commonly used on most stages so it was particularly impressive. The thing that makes or can make musicals in this genre more attractive are props because they add colour, they make it more realistic, added connotations and helps you to tell what is happening by symbolic representation. The set disappointed me because you could see people controlling the light and the sound, which was a bit distracting, and it was harder to imagine the narrative. The lighting was technical with lots of lights to create the mood, atmosphere and time of day. To create stars on the cyclorama they beamed a concentrated white light onto a moving disco ball at an angle so the audience could tell what time of day it was. But the only problem was that some of the stars bounced of onto the audience so they had to move their head uncomfortably to dodge the beam going into their eyes. The main tone of lighting was houselights to portray inside scenes and flood lighting for the outside scenes. It shows the audience where the characters are and what time of day is being portrayed. The sound effects were very realistic and gave the audience a clear impression of the setting of each scene. At one point in the play they used a cockerel sound affect to help create the illusion of a countryside scene. The theme was a hybrid between a musical and a tragedy, with the addition of comedy, which made it even more entertaining. It was set back in the mid 80’s early 90’s. The houses on the set were council estate with an old brick laid road, which gave the impression of a run down, working class community. This could have made the audience sympathetic to the characters, although the children were not properly educated or disciplined enough by their parents to respect their environment. The biggest moments of impact were the rude parts which made me laugh and the unpredictable parts which shocked and surprised me and the audience around me. At one point a young boy was hiding behind a bed sheet on a washing line, when a certain part of the sheet started to rise, insinuating that the boy was sexually aroused by a young girl in his presence. This was a particularly hilarious scene and the audience roared with hysterical laughter. Towards the end of the play the two main characters, Mickie and Eddie, stood facing each other with Mickie pointing a gun towards Eddie. This whilst their mother Ms Johnston was trying to persuade Mickie to put down the weapon. Then BANG!! BANG!! – and Eddie fell to the ground closely followed by Mickie. The audience jumped with shock at this point.

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Everyday Use Essay

Everyday Use is tale of two siblings who are the exact opposite of each other and how they view the world around them. Dee and Maggie are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, as Dee is more of an outgoing woman who fervently pursued education to get away from her humble beginnings. She wanted to be successful as her mother recalls â€Å"Dee (Wanergo) wanted nice things†, while Maggie always embraced the conventional role of woman (Walker 273). Dee is not quite feminine like her sister as she says â€Å"I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man† (273). However, Maggie is an introvert who prefers being at home and doing household chores. Maggie, ever since her accident is not so confident, as her mom recalls â€Å"she will stand hopeless in corners, homely and ashamed† (272). Dee is also very selfish and inconsiderate about her family’s feelings, as she views her family quilt as a mere cultural artifacts and tries to take away it away from them with no remorse. On the contrary, Maggie never tries to deny her sister any of her, although it may at the cost of her own happiness. Her mom says that Maggie â€Å"thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand† (272). However, she is very saddened by her wanting to take away the quilt that she and her grandmother made with their own hands. However, Dee says â€Å"Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts†, failing to see the sentimental value of the quilt to her sister (278). Conclusion Dee is more pretentious as she tries to put up an African persona to sound more cultured and cosmopolitan. She changes her name and her appearance to suit her new found African heritage and justifies it by saying â€Å"I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me† (276). Maggie, on the other hand, is content with her life and comfortable with her African-American descent. Works Cited Page Walker, A. (1973). †Everyday Use†. In Love and Trouble, 272-276.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Understanding of operations in the hospitality sector Essay

Understanding of operations in the hospitality sector - Essay Example In this regard, companies such as Hilton Hotels & Resorts Corporation have emerged as major investors in the London market. Essentially, the Hilton Hotels & Resorts company has been one of the most successive companies in the hospitality sector in the London market. The company has established its operation bases in various locations across London. An analysis of the company’s success history reveals that it has gone through a strategic developmental process. This study focuses to evaluate the performance of Hilton Hotels and Resorts Corporation and providing an overview of the company’s areas of improvement as well as the appropriate course of action that can be employed to solve some of challenges facing the corporation. The company has shown remarkable performance in London. The number of people visiting the company’s establishments in London has been increasing from time to time. The outstanding performance of the company can be attributed to the effective use of the modern technology and employment of competent workers. The corporation  has realized  the need for incorporating the modern technology in all of its establishment. Most services of the company have been computerized to enhance efficiency and timely delivery. In essence, customers visiting any of the company’s establishments are assured of quality services and satisfaction. The company has established effective websites where customers can get any information regarding the various establishment. In addition to official websites, the company has ventured into the social media for advertisements and interaction with customers. In this regard, the customer services have been made more accessible and efficient. Apparently, the company has established reliable online payment and booking platforms. In this regard, customers can book and pay for accommodation form any part of the world. Therefore,

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Research course - critical analysis paper Term Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Research course - critical analysis - Term Paper Example In the course of this absenteeism, patients crowd the Nephrology facilities due to lack of adequate personnel to care of them. Their condition may worsen due to the delay in treatment. The purpose of this research is, therefore, to provide an outline of relationship among psychological empowerment, structural empowerment, and burnout in registered staff nurses working in outpatient Hemodialysis settings. This problem statement builds a strong statement by stating the Nephrology nurses usually go through during the burnout. It also clearly states the risks involved by mentioning the consequences of the burnout. From the problem statement, it is clear that the patients’ health is at risk. However, we are not told about the mechanisms through which the burnout comes about. Besides, Janice does not seem to take sides; one cannot easily tell the view from which the researcher argues (Houser, 2013). A research question is normally formulated before the onset of any field study. It normally addresses the cause and effect of the problem on the ground. In a research question, the researcher has no immediate answers. The researchers may design a set of questions that must only be answered by the analysis of the data collected in the field. However, it is not always obvious that the answers for the research questions are going to be obtained; some phenomena may remain ambiguity. An example of a research question in this context would be: What are the consequences of the burnout experienced by the Nephrology nurses? No research question was used in this study. Hypothesis, on the contrary, tries to make assumptions of the research questions. It tries to answer the questions prior to the field study. Hypotheses are, in essence, just the expected outcomes of the research. After data analysis, the hypotheses may be proved right or wrong. In this research, a number of hypotheses had been put forward by the author. They were

Curriculum development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Curriculum development - Essay Example Lewis and Arthur (1972) identified definition of curriculum in the following categories: course of study, intended learning outcomes, intended opportunities for engagement learning opportunities provided, learner’s actual engagement, and learner’s actual experiences. They defined curriculum as â€Å"a set of intentions about opportunities for engagement of persons-to-be-educated with other persons and with things (all bearers of information, processes, techniques, and values) in certain arrangements of time and space.† Tanner and Tanner (1980) traced the history of curriculum definitions showing that â€Å"curriculum has been variously defined as: 1) the cumulative tradition of organized knowledge; 2) modes of thoughts; 3) race experience; 4) guided experience; 5) a planned learning environment; 6) cognitive/affective content and process; 7) an instructional plan; 8) instructional ends or outcomes; and 9) a technological systems of production.† Historically and currently, the dominant concepts of the curriculum is that of subjects and subject matter therein to be taught by teachers and learned by students. In high schools and colleges, the term curriculum has been and still is widely used to refer to the set of subjects or courses offered, and also to those required or recommended or grouped for other purposes; thus, terms as the college preparatory curriculum, science curriculum, and premedical curriculum are commonly used. In curriculum terminology, program of studies is more properly used in these connections. Despite efforts for over a half century to achieve broader and different curriculum foci, the concept of curriculum as subject matter persists as the basis of the dominant curriculum design. It was central to and emphasized by the wave of curriculum development in the subject fields that began in the 1950s and was stimulated by the Russian advance into out space and subsequent pressure to improve American education. The concept of the curriculum as

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Jet Blue Airways Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Jet Blue Airways - Essay Example The company’s shares performed well since the IPO due to JetBlue’s perceived successful business model and its strong financials results (JetBlue). Jet Blue has been a reputable company in the airline sector within USA since its launch in year 1998 due to being a low cost airline company; the company achieved low operating costs while offering customers a pleasant flying experience. Jet Blue has not only survived but also performed well during difficult industry period i.e. 2000-2003, this period can be deemed as a recession period for the airline sector due to the September 11, 2001 bombings. Jet Blue prepared a different response to these recessionary times in the airline industry to achieve its positive result (Rovenpor & Michel 2009) The company flew new airplanes and its flying experience included reliable on-time performance, comfortable and roomy leather seats, free 24-channel satellite TV service through TV screens installed in the back of each seat, pre-assigned seating, and friendly service by crew members. JetBlue generally chose to fly between densely populated cities and chose airports that were undeserved by existing airline carriers. The company’s markets tended to be large metropolitan areas with high average fares. Once it entered a new market, JetBlue’s comparatively low airfares stimulated new demand from passengers who may otherwise not have flown and often resulted in JetBlue capturing market share from the incumbent carrier (JetBlue, Newsweek 2001 & Rovenpor & Michel 2009) JetBlue aims on providing the customers the best possible service at a low cost. These services include point to point route to save the time of the consumers and a high quality consumer service. This high quality consumer service is maintained by their employees who are recruited only after passing tough tests. JetBlue makes sure that their service does not get affected even if they

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Surgical Patient Flow Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Surgical Patient Flow - Essay Example In this descriptive and qualitative study, the data was collected through timings taken in the hospital interviews with the staff by following an elective orthopaedic surgical patient, beginning with the decision to operate followed by the timing in which the surgery was carried out. The main findings were the absence of a system in existence as surgical patient flow management to follow-up the complete patient journey and to synchronize the surgical steps as well as co-ordinate the various pieces of patient information needed. There is duplicity in the system while transferring the patient from the clinic to the case manager, and also in the way of determining the surgical day, which can very easily result in a step being omitted. An Official Translator needs to be appointed in the Operation Theatre to avoid incorrect communication to emit and to maintain patient privacy. It was concluded that action needs to be taken to implement the surgical patient flow management, integrate all the system related surgical patient needs, and to educate the patient about the steps that needed to be done. This dissertation has required the time and patience of a number of people whom I needed to interview in order to collect my data, and to each one of you whom I wish to keep unnamed at this point in time. I am grateful for your timely contributions. It is important to note the following individuals who have been involved with this project: Dr. Zaid Al-Zaid, Chairman of the Orthopedic Surgery Department at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, who spent many hours patiently and good-humouredly explaining surgical patient flow at KFSH&RC. His role as a Surgeon in the clinic is integral to the training of students. His assistance in the area of decision-making as well as linking valuable professional connections is greatly

Monday, September 23, 2019

Personal statement, Career and Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Personal statement, Career and Education - Essay Example I am attracted to the University of Las Vegas because of the faculty, the curriculum, and particularly because of the opportunities for hands-on training and education. Actually, I have been interested in the research and the application of scientific techniques to the health care field for many years. At Santa Ana College, for instance, I studied Pharmacy Technology in addition to focusing on chemistry and biology. Even before I decided to earn my degree in chemical engineering, I was interested in how my scientific background might be applied in the health care environment. My attractions to this field of study are essentially twofold. As an initial matter, I am fascinated by problem-solving projects. Using my theoretical knowledge to diagnose conditions and to resolve problems is an extraordinarily fulfilling task. Second, knowing that people would benefit medically from my research and work is also attractive. Ideally, I would like to use my education and training as a basis for further research. My goal is to become an expert in the field and to pursue advanced study. As mentioned before, I have a particular interest in research and development. I am interested in publishing and perhaps becoming an instructor in the future.

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Bond and Curve Essay Example for Free

Bond and Curve Essay The first tool that we want to use to look at news, news for fixed income. So what we’ll do is we’ll navigate down to the bottom of the menu, and we’ll click on 14 NBOND for bond news. Clicking that, it’ll load a very familiar page for you. This is the news categories. And you’ll notice on the top left in the toolbar it says bonds. So now we have our top bond news. This isn’t just our top bond news, but also we can choose popular news, and we can also see all news for bonds. You can customize the type of fixed income news by either clicking on customize and choosing from there, or if you click new search you can also type in additional fixed income topics like credit markets, municipal bonds, additional categories that I already have in my particular monitor here. Now for the next screen that we would like to look at is economic calendar. This is another screen that you should be familiar with already from the other videos, but let’s type in ECO for economic calendar. And from here, specifically for fixed income, we can focus on releases within the top left menu. If we click the economic releases and go down to government auctions, this is going to bring up the auctions for the United States in particular. You can change the country. If you want to put in Germany, you can type in Germany. And notice if we go back to the United States, all the current releases are in white and all the future releases are going to be in amber, just like before. If you want to see the results of those, you can again click into that release and you can see that data in there as well the news stories listed below. Now for an overview of the global fixed income markets, we can type WB for world bond markets, and then hit the go key. Notice that we have our countries on the left hand side, and across from those we have columns for information like price, the change in price, yield, change in yield, a charge of the yield. And then on the right side, we have a relative value performance of how do we look – how is the yield now versus the average over a period? In this case, we’re comparing the yield of now in blue versus the average, which is in three months. You can change that easily by clicking one week, for example, and now you can see if the yield is wider or tighter than the average that you specified on the top right. In addition, you can change the maturity of the bonds. If you want to look at five years, change it to five years and that’ll update – that’ll update accordingly. It’ll show you the individual securities here. If you want to see any additional information from those, you can actually click on the name of the country, and that’ll take you into a deeper level menu where now you can see the different tenors of that curve. You can see the curve spreads, butterflies, additional information there that you can explore. Let’s hit the menu key. We also have two additional tabs. If you click on spreads, that’ll give you spreads relative to the country you have selected. If you want to see spreads relative to Italy, we can choose Italy from the list. And now it’s giving you the spread of Italy versus the United States in blue. Additionally, you have the spread chart and the historical comparison available just like in the bonds tab. Lastly, we have the curves tab. And what that’s doing is it’s letting you compare all these countries with a side by side of each point on that curve so you can get a quick and real-time update of those curves and how they’re moving. Now WB is a monitor with real-time information that rates (ph) currently trading in the market. For an overview of bond yield forecasts, we can look at BYFC and hit go. Now BYFC will give you bond yield forecasts for multiple points on the curve, as well as three-month benchmark rates, as well as tenor spreads that you can specify up on the top right. You can narrow down the countries or focus on the countries based on your region on the top. And going back to let’s say the United States, BYFC has six quarters worth of forecasts. And these forecasts are contributed to us by economists and market researchers on a monthly basis by our Bloomberg monthly news surveys. When you click into the particular bond tenor, it’ll mention who forecasts, as well as the statistical information that corresponds with those surveys and when they were received. For a real-time monitor of benchmark rates, you can use BTMM. BTMM is our treasury and money markets monitor. This can be specified by country. You can change your country on the top left and then navigate based on the region and choose the country directly from there. Now we have rates from – deposit rates, all of our benchmark rates. It also includes treasury rates on the left side, as well as even the gold spot rate and equity index futures. This is a great way for market players and for you to get a pulse in real time what the rates are as they change in the market. To conduct curve comparison, to look at a curve for a particular country, to look at their CDS curve, rate curve, we can look at all those by typing CRVFgo for curve finder. Within the curve finder, along the top the tabs will show you what types of curves we have available. Within those, we can navigate by country. We can also look on the far side and see based on those countries what we have available. Now in our example, let’s search for the A US corporate curve. If we go to credit and then we look at industrial, we can then select the A. And we wanted to see this in US dollars, so we can click on US industrials A BVAL curve. Now that we have selected that curve, we can go to the bottom right and click show selected curves. Now we can see the curve for the US industrial A curve where we have the one-year through 30-year rate. These are the yields of the curve, and we also have some additional curves on the far right that I’ve added in the past. But right now we’re only seeing the industrial A curve. We have the yields down here on the bottom, and if we want to see this as of a historical date, then we can see how did that curve look one week ago. If we click on the one W at the top, now we can see the current curve versus the curve of one week ago, and then the spread between those two. If we want to enter a custom date instead, we can enter those dates here by clicking, and then we can put in the dates on the top. Now if we want to specify a custom date, we can go to the more tab. Then once we select, we can drop the custom date and then enter, let’s say, March 9, 2012. When we click update, now our curve will show March 9, 2012, along with the other dates there. If we want to add another curve and see how does this industrial curve compare to, maybe we could use the US swap curve here, we can just check that curve. And now you’ll see the other curve is in a different color and you can see them charted against each other. You can always unselect – you can always remove those curves as you like. If you want to add a curve that’s specific, you can click to browse, and then use that same menu and navigation to go to your next curve. The last thing I want to show you with the curve is to click menu to go back. And we can see these data points numerically in a table if we scroll our mouse or hit the page forward key on our keyboard, which is the green key next to our menu key that you used before. Now you can see for each curve what that historical date was in the table. All the applications we’ve discussed today have all been market monitors and broad-level overview. Now let’s move into actually finding a screen for securities. Then we’ll close with looking at individual security applications. Now, to start, the easiest application that we have to do a security find is to actually use SECF, go. SECF is our security finder. And what that allows you to do is to browse Bloomberg’s universe of securities and statistics. Now the security finder is really in two sections. The top is our control area, which allows you to look at the individual tabs by asset class, as well as the search tool at the very top left. The second half is really the output section, the section that’s going to show you the results in a table, and then it’ll let you search by relevancy. Now let’s say that we have an example where we want to search for a bond from IBM. We can click on 32FI, and then notice that we have always additional buttons across the bottom. Now we have this for corporates, but in addition, if you happen to look for bond futures, interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, loans, those are available there too. For IBM, we’ll stay on corporate. And then in the issuer name, we can type in IBM for International Business Machines. Alternatively, you could also type in IBM as the ticker since that’s the actual corporate ticker for IBM. Here we can actually look through the list and search what coupon we were looking for. We can do that, or we can actually narrow it out and type in 7.5 and – if that’s the coupon we’re looking for – and then it’ll show it right there. It’ll give us brief statistics in that list. And then when you’re ready to actually load that security for analysis, then you can actually click on that security and it’ll launch that for you. Now if you would rather use the search box instead of narrowing it down through these filters, you can clear that from the list. And then in the top where it says search, you can type IBM. We were looking at the 7.5 percent coupon. When we hit go, then again it’ll show us our result here. If you wish to do a more sophisticated search, you can definitely do that within Bloomberg. In order to do that search, you would type SRCH and then hit go. Within SRCH, you can do an advanced search for corporates and government bonds. To do so, start out with clicking on the top red – top right red advanced search button. Now you’ll see your difference choices on the left for your filtering. If you wish to specify an issue date or a maturity date, you can go into issuance information 2, click there, and then you can enter that information here. Additionally, covenants. You can definitely select any one of these check boxes. You can just definitely notice these gray tabs as you scroll across the top. This is where you’re going to get your additional information. You can narrow it down by credit ratings and choose. Let’s say you want to use SP ratings and you want to include only investment grade in your search. Now you can either individually select, or you can click investment grade and then click update. You can also – if you want to specify a particular range of yields or a particular price range, you can click 7, inventory and analytical data. And then down here in the middle you can specify your prices or your yields. We’ll make our search very broad and we’ll put in 1 to 10 percent, and then click update. This is – this is not the exhaustive list. You can click any one of these. And you’ll notice that we also again have additional tabs here if you want to sort by sector. The list goes on. Now let’s click 1 go. The way to see your search results is to click 1, go to search. Notice that we have over 30,000 results. We’ll only see 5,000 of those results in this screen. In addition, if you were to export this to Excel, which you can definitely do, that will also be limited to a maximum of 5,000 results, just as – as a note for that. You can also save this search. If this is a search that you need to run again, then you can go to options, save search, and then you can come back to this search in the future and rerun it. And in the future, you may have – you’ll have the opportunity to have those different results. Now let’s – let’s look at screens that pertain to individual securities. Before we were looking at a bond with a 7.5 percent coupon from IBM. We can type IBM at the top, and then 7.5. Notice that our auto complete helps find that security. So you can use SECF that we discussed before, or you can use auto complete to type in your security if you have the – the information here, like we do. You can that to select your security, or you can also type it in as your CUSIP (ph) or other identifier there and it’ll help find it for you. We’ll click it from that list, and that automatically loads the security for us. You’ll notice that we have this menu of applications that we can run. And we won’t have time to discuss these today, but definitely explore these for your analytics for relative value hedging, things that you can look forward to in the future. The particular screen that we’re looking for right now is the description page. So click on 16 DES on the top right. Now notice on the description page we have the core information, including issuer, the type of issuer it is, the sector that they’re in. We have the coupon – coupon frequency, core information about that security. On the left side, we have navigation. We can look at information such as covenants. We can look at bond ratings. If you want to see historical bond ratings for this issuer, then you can actually click on the expansion tabs to see those right in the screen. In addition to that, you can also see if there’s multiple coupons or if there’s a schedule, if it’s callable or puttable, things like that. You can click into schedules. It’s grayed out if it’s not available. In addition to the information that we have in the bond description, we also have a tab for issuer-level information. Let’s click on 22 issuer description. And particularly, we can look at 4 debt summary to look at their distribution. Now here we have nice charts and breakdowns, but note that in these individual tabs on the left we can also launch the individual applications directly by clicking on them. If we expand this window, now we can see the full application for our debt distribution. And here we can see IBM, and then we can also see the companies that are part of that business where we can see the issuer and subsidiaries. As we scroll down, we can see that entire list. One additional note is that you can also group your debt distribution by whether it’s just the issuer – only obligations of the current issuer. You can narrow down that debt based on its group. Let’s close that. Notice that we have more than just the debt distribution. We also have major creditors who own that bond, credit health as in financial ratios to give you a better perspective on not just that particular issue, but also that issuer. Now, to move from core information – core descriptive information to actual analytics to run yield analysis on this particular security, we can type YA and hit go for yield analysis. On this page, you can see that we have additional tabs, one for yield and spread. We can then move to pricing to see descriptive information. But let’s stay on the yield and spread tab just for a moment. The yield and spread analysis screen will let you price a fixed income security, calculate risk, hedge amounts, and see market data. You can input custom spreads. So in this case it’s the spread to bench, and it’ll reprice your security based on your input. So here we put a spread to bench of 20 basis points and it recalculated our price and yield. In addition, we can change how we calculate our yield if it’s yield to worse (ph), or yield to maturity, or yield to a custom date. We can also enter in historical dates in our historical settle (ph), and you just type that in here. We have our spreads. You won’t need to know – if you’re not familiar with these types of spreads, if you hover your mouse over them, it’ll give you a brief description of what those are. On the right side, we have our risk measures, risk and convexity. We have our risk hedge. These are against the benchmark that you select here. And then also, it calculates our accrued interest and all-in price. We can move across the tabs along the top, and now we can pricing. Pricing based on what’s available on the market from the trace reporting, from our runs messages, things like that, descriptive information or snapshots from what we had on the description page that we looked at just prior to this screen. We have relative value graphs to see not just what it is today, but how that’s changed over time. And then custom gives you full customization of what type of information you want to see on each page. You can click into any one of these tabs to then launch that individual analysis within that section of the screen. If you like this custom tab or any of these tabs, you can change the order by dropping it across, and then it’ll set that way for you going forward. The final screen we’d like to discuss today is a credit monitor that you can type GCDS. Notice again we used auto complete. We can select it here or hit go. And what GCDS does is it shows you credit default swap spreads based on the sectors that you choose.gcds You can set it by region. You can import a portfolio or – based on an equity index, a launch pad monitor. It gives you a very wide range of sources to pull that from, as well as the full customization of what spreads you wish to see. In my setup here, we can look at it by region. We have it set up for the Americas, although we can set it for global. Here I have listed for banks, but we can choose by any sector listed in this drop menu. We can choose to sort out whether we want to see investment grade or high yield. And then we can choose which tenor of the CDS curve we wish to view. And lastly, we can choose which pricing source we want to narrow that down by. We can choose CMA New York, for example, or we can also use a Bloomberg composite price here, which is what we’ll use going forward here. Now, on the right-hand column are all securities or all the issuers where we have CDS pricing based on our selections up here. If we choose to check off the box, then it’ll add that – that name to that chart, and you’ll notice it’s added that in the legend if it’s available. We also can see the average spread for all 35, or we can do – we can click on average of selected ancd then see that charted. So we can say which names are above the average, which names are below the average. To conclude that example, notice that our highest spread on the chart is currently Morgan Stanley. Notice that on the legend it highlights the name. That is currently trading above the average, which is 201. Notice that if I put my cursor on the actual – the average of selected, then it also highlights which line that is. The average is at 201. So GCS is a great tool to not just narrow out the individual names that you want to chart on a graph, but also let’s you easily compare those not just against each other but also against as a group average. And just as a note, if you never get your mouse to the very top right hand corner, you can see that there’s an icon with a green arrow. You can click on this green arrow and drag that into Excel, and that’ll move the information from the screen into Excel for you. This concludes are session on fixed income essentials. If you need any future assistance, please feel free to hit the help key twice for immediate assistance from our 24/7 global help desk.

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Electronic Notice Board Software

Electronic Notice Board Software ENB project was created to modernise the classic means of communication through the pin and paperboard based communication to the more efficient and dynamic communication of general information to the students of the Bolton University. Student and faculty will get the timely information while they are walking around School office or in Labs. ENB will remind the student about the critical dates for the exams, social events, and warnings etc. It will positively affect the student behaviour towards the academic excellence and time management. ENB will decrease the rate of late assignments submission and absents among the students. ENB will decrease the workload of university management for printing and pasting the traditional paper based notice boards. ENB system will not require any additional hardware and it will be developed in the Microsoft Visual Basic .net Express Edition and Microsoft SQL server Database hence low cost of development and implementation. ENB will bring forth a positive change in the university environment. ENB project was created using the VB.NET and SQL database express editions, which are free of cost. Database is designed to ensure the efficiency of the software in the network environment. A survey was conducted on the sample of students to evaluate the potential of ENB to improve the overall communication in the campus. To ensure the successful implementation of the project the software was tested and evaluated in the campus environment. The final solution met all the basic requirements and also delivered some extra features. Further features and improvement can be added in the future. The report has the details of the ENB project from start to end, including the requirement analysis, background research, design, implementation, testing and evaluation stages. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Problem Definition During my time in university I have missed many recreational occasions and a couple of times I have missed important dates of final assignment submissions as I was miss informed about the dates. All these errors of misinformation made me realize the necessity of an electronics notice board. In the University of Bolton there are many problems, distinguish is between rumour and true information. At times dates are changed and change of plan is very poorly communicated to the students and faculty, which creates confusion. In case of an ENB students will have access to important announcements while walking around and have the benefit of being reminded several times a day. Currently university administration is using a Paper based notice board. A printed black and white poster is pasted on the notice board to announce university events. The method indeed consumes the administrative and clerical time of the university. Sometimes the change of dates is not timely announced, which provokes frustration among the students of the concerned disciplines. The ENB project was realised and envisaged based on the concept of improving the communication channels within the University campus among students and the faculty members. For example to announce the start of new semester a simple piece of paper is loosely pasted at the front door notice board of school office. Sometimes the fonts are not appropriate and the black ink prints are not very attractive and appealing to grab the real attention of the concerned students. So the students miss the critical information and often submit the final project or prepare for the final exams very close to the deadline. In my opinion irrespective of the students aptitude the fault might be at the universitys end. The ENB will effectively convey the key academic information to the students hence there will be great reduction in the late submission of the final projects and assignments. The ENB will play a powerful role at will increase the academic productive of the students. A notice board can be defined as Abulletin board(pinboard,pin boardornotice boardin British English) is a place where people can leave publicmessages [1] A Notice Board is a traditional tool for the dissemination of information in academic campuses. A traditional Notice board is made of a wooden frame with a soft central square of cork for pinning the papers of information for the students. Widespread adaptation of information technology has changed the traditional means of information dispersion. Electronic notice board is an innovative replacement for the traditional wood and cork notice boards. Due to the dynamic nature of the electronic notice board it has practical application in the corporate environment. Following are some of the case studies about the practical application of electronic notice board in both academic and corporate scenarios. Aim The project ENB aims to develop and implement application software that will disseminate the academic information in the network environment among the students and faculty members. The project ENB will open the new powerful channel of communication between university management and students. The solution will consist of a page server and client PCs as the notice boards. In the design phase I will focus on to simplifying the end user experience of using the ENB. End users will probably include members of admin staff. For the administrator it will be hassle free to upload the different formats of multimedia. There will be some quick templates to quickly upload the announcements. The ENB system first time configuration will be automatic therefore very easy. There must be server software on one end therefore the client side will automatically detect the server. In case of multiple page servers the ENB system will give options to connect. The ENB system will be Database driven hence it will take the minimal amount of network bandwidth. The ENB system will be network based therefore additional network optimization technology will be deployed to make it as fast as possible The system will be operated by Administrator and other staff to assist them in scheduling tasks for messages in the near future. Also an aim of the project is to develop the framework so that it is easy to extend in the future. Objectives The ENB system will be developed using the visual basic programming language and MS SQL SERVER database. I will focus on the following outcomes for the finished product. In order to satisfy the aim the following objectives need to be achieved: Deploying a software engineering methodology relevant to the ENB project Design a data model for ENB Design and develop an integrated system to query the data model Test and Evaluate the ENB against the requirements Minimum Requirements A prototype of an integrated framework for Electronic Notice Board system which can be informative and flexible. A prototype to input and store task commands. A prototype to input and store scheduled task commands. A prototype to input and transfer scheduled task to task command data. Enhancements A login system to provide security for the server application. View of Report of pending tasks for any date. View of Report of completed tasks for any date. Administrator prototype to add new users on database server. Administrator prototype to run client in Admin mode. Data bound schema to control scheduled tasks. Controlling the clients status active or inactive Input FIFO: First in First out. As task is set to client, it is executed straight away. Time Controlled pattern: Events are controlled by given time. Time can span to any number of minutes, hours or even days. Date Controlled pattern: Events are controlled by given Date. Time and date controlled pattern: combination of Time Controlled pattern and Date controlled pattern. Client Registration Data Primary Input Client Id, Client Name, Client Unique Id, Time of Registration, Date of Registration. Secondary Input Client State. Base Data (Client Data) Base table is basically a blueprint for all clients. (Primary Input) Record Id, Task Id, Task Command, Task Arguments (Additional input) Task in Time, Task in Date, Task State Scheduled Data It is same as Base Database. (Primary Input) Record Id, Task Id, Task Command, Task Arguments (Additional input) Task in Time, Task in Date, Task State Output For each task that is in current execution schema is grouped by registered users and are performed by clients on given time span. Scheduled tasks are placed in scheduler and on given time they are transferred to corresponding client(s) for execution. Requirements Analysis The purpose for this project is not to develop a system that can act as a notice board but to integrate and utilize data driven technology to accomplish complex tasks with ease without any additional hardware to display message. Integrated scheduling technology provides flexibility and automation. Orange valley systems are the market leader for marketing the ENB application for the business organizations Appendix WRITE IT IN END. A thorough analysis was conducted on the orange valley product. Basic idea for the ENB features was captured from the screen shots available from their website. In depth interviews were conducted with the students, friends, and the IT administrator staff. On collecting the requirement analysis data from the above research the following functional and non functional requirements were devised. Functional Requirements Add and edit tasks. Add and edit scheduled tasks. Add and remove tasks. Schedule tasks Display reports of tasks. Non Functional Requirements System must be easy to use and navigate. System should have a consistent interface. CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGIES Methodologies Communication is the lifeline of any social system. Success of any organization is directly related to the effectiveness for their communication systems. Academics are no exception for this. An effective campus communication system must be understood, credible, and practically utilized. Attributes about the campus communication In the year 1973 Mr. Anderson Jerry M presented his research papers at the Annual meeting of the Nebraska speech communication association. Title of the research papers were Improving the internal communication: A campus Quandary. Research papers were based on the formal interviews with the 90 interviewees. Each interview took 15 to 90 minutes. Interviewees were randomly selected persons of the campuses. Interviewees included the campus administrators, faculty, students, staff, alumni and trustees representing 30 post secondary institutions of different sizes. Past research data was also used to analyze the results of the research. The 1971-72 opinion research was based on an interview format designed to be open-ended to encourage respondents to call upon personal experience and ventilate feelings. The interviews unveiled the issues and anxieties regarding the campus communication. Two questions formed the basis for interviews, except in a few instances where a more structured questioning approach was necessitated to elicit more extended responses. Those two questions: From your perspective and experiences, how effective is communication on this campus? What, if anything, would you do to improve it? [2] Three general attitudes clearly emerged. The need for improved campus communication is among the most significant and pressing problems. When asked why, most answered that the functional operation of the campus was dependent upon communication effectiveness and it could be much improved, and internal effectiveness as perceived by those outside the campus would determine the level of future support. Recommendations for improvement were multiple, usually incomplete in development, and concluded with the statement that no clear solutions existed. Concern was expressed about the lack of sensitivity and attention to communication problems by those with the expertise to improve the situation and by others in positions to effect change. Opinion research drew the following conclusions. Research uncovered a strong need to improve the campus communication. Old faculty members were nostalgic about the good old days when they knew everybody in campus and always knew the important events Campus members realize the ultimate responsibility of communication lies on administration Administrator is frustrated about changing the campus communication. They dont understand the approach to the change. They themselves are confused on aligning their communication between deans and faculty. Faculty members and chairman were not happy with the unreasonable deadlines, dissemination of information in clusters, reactions to proposed policies. Communication denial and communication under load were the main concern of middle level management. Campus staff was concerned about the lack of confidence upon their colleagues due to surveillance and audit of their work. Information used to distort when passing down or up in the hierarchy of the organization. Traditional approaches were not working 20% of the sample showed their lack of interest for improving the campus communication. These were mostly the students and faculty members. Interviewees were most distrustful about the administrative communication behaviour especially lack of disclosure Solutions for improving the Campus Communication Communication had been improved using the technological advances. Providing informational announcement is on closed circuit television between classes had proven to be effective. The use of telephone answering services in offices during after hours, and as a message dissemination system for people to call and hear important recorded messages. Catalogues and bulletins and other information sources need be written with the sensitivity to readability. Departments or divisions, large institutions, should be encouraged to develop newsletters. Bulletin boards could be kept up to date and used more extensively I have chance to review the communication methods deployed by the UK universities. These are some general and specialise methods. News Kantor, Brian and Phil Lapsley Network News Transfer Protocol: A Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News. 1986. [3] Universities employ NNTP (network news transfer protocol) service named News as the official bulletin board. NNTP provides discussion forums for modules, programming languages and other both academic and non-academic topics. NNTP has also the application of a notice board where official announcements are posted. Students can access the news by any newsreader. Thunderbird email client and Tin are popular newsreader. Students are required to read the newsgroups on a regular basis as it is the main method of official communication between the school and students. It has been noticed in the recent years a falling trend of reading news among the university students. Email Universities provide everyone with an email account. Using email to communicate has several advantages. Email Communications are often more effective than printed direct mail. [4] Firstly email is a flexible system that by now has large amounts of web integration. Therefore people have flexibility in how to access their email account Secondly email is an accepted method of communication with people usually inspecting their email on a habitual basis and therefore messages be likely to get read. As a broader point, email is simply further widely used all-round. SIS The term SIS School Information System is used in some of the UK universities. SIS provides information on students, staff, modules, timetables, coursework and more. From the perspective of an undergraduate student, SIS provides access to the school timetables, modules information, and coursework results and is also used to facilitate the submission of electronic coursework. Module websites In most of the UK universities every module has its own WebPages. Modular group of pages can be accessed on adding codes in the official URL. These web pages typically include the outline of the module, lecture slides from each lecture, sample coursework, additional reading and information on the examination and assessment process for the module. [5] Wiki The simplest online database that could possibly work.[6] Universities have link to the WIKI. WIKI has rigorous information of how to and guides to using the facilities. The wiki provides plenty of helpful information and is frequently the first port of call for numerous students when students have a problem or desire information on the University facilities. University of Bolton has the WIKI. It also has new information that people are continuously adding. However until now nearly all of the edits have been through by staff or by a small selection of students. It has up till now to be fully embraced by undergraduate students with a small number of using it on a regular basis and barely any undergraduates contributing to it. VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) Mostly Uk Universities Library has a virtual learning environment which the universities developed in-house and launched in around 1996. Access to the environment is available through a web browser for both students and guests [7].The thought is to create a virtual campus online separated up into various buildings which house the different resources on offer. The quantity of information available varies from school to school and from module to module. For example the business school has a chat room, module information, lecture slides and past exam papers for a large number of their modules. The School of Computing however does not. This is most probably because all this information is available on the schools intranet. The VLE also provides quick access to searching Google, Oxford reference dictionary, Thesaurus.com, Institute and the library catalogue. Facebook Facebook is a social networking website analogous to MySpace. It was at first targeted at university students. The site was launched in 2004. It was primarily developed for student community of Harvard and extended to offer networks for other universities and ultimately opened membership to all and sundry in 2006. The idea is based around a series of networks, one for each university. In order to join the network one needs to use a valid email address for that institution (for instance, in order to join the University of Bolton network you require to use a @Bolton.ac.uk email address. You then have access to that networks features such as being able to view peoples profiles, joining groups and creating and replying to event invitations. Facebook is amazingly popular with students, claiming a penetration rate of 85% among US college students. Facebook also achieves very high levels of user retention. Over 50% of its user base visits the site every day [8] and on average each user view s 50 pages of the site per day. The main problem with Facebook from the perspective of the school is that is it not managed by the Institution and the Institution has no control over it. The school has no effective way to utilise Facebook to communicate with students as it does not have control over the School of Computing group on Facebook and only a minority of the staff are registered on the site. A more elemental problem is that Facebook is a social networking website intended for students and was not intended to be used for academic activities or to be utilised by academic institutions. Conclusion In the universities of UK current methods of campus communication do not seem to be engaging the students. Declining use of the News and other web based IT platform shows that students information needs are not met. Facebook is very popular but Universities have no control on it. Therefore it would appear to the Universities requirement to deal with these problems either by upgrading their existing systems or adopting a new system in order to engage students more and meet the new level of expectations of the students. CHAPTER 3 BACKGROUND RESEARCH Background Reading Software Engineering Methodologies A methodology is a structured approach to design and develop the software, hence reducing the chances of software project failure. Methodology provides a recommendation of a series of steps to be followed [9]. There are number of software development methodologies. The selection of the methodology depends on the scoop and complexity of the project. Some of the famous methodologies are Waterfall Model which is also described classical model [10]. The Spiral Model was introduced to replace the Waterfall Model [4]. The Spiral model is being criticised for its rigidity. The Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology became popular in the early 1990s due to the perceived deficiencies of the traditional waterfall approach [11]. RAD is ideal for the projects where requirements may change during or after the development.RAD has advantage on other methodologies to save the time required for development. Prototyping is another methodology in which developer builds an application from the requirements. There are two types of prototyping methodologies evolutionary prototyping and throwaway prototyping. It is important to decide in advance the selection for the type of prototyping methodology [12]. After a thorough analysis it seems that no single methodology is suitable for the ENB project. Chosen methodology will be explained in the following section. Chosen Methodology It has been decided after reviewing the common methodologies, it seems appropriate to select the Evolutionary prototyping methodology for the ENB project. RAD will be used to develop the required features of the ENB software. Using an only the approach of RAD will lead to the errors and the prototyping will allow correcting the errors. Prototyping has the four main stages. Identification of the requirements. Development of a prototype system. Review the prototype. Revisions and enhancements of the Prototype. Prototyping typing will allow the development of the certain module of the project. Even if the whole project is not developed, there will be basic system to be developed further in the future. For example server side application will be developed with all requirements of scheduling, the tasks and defining the users rights. The client application will be developed afterwards. Client application will have support for the features of the server. On the user evaluation the further features will be added on the server side. RAD will be used on each phase of the development therefore the client server applications will be developed rapidly. RAD will be used within each phase of development, so the Time Controlled pattern / Date Controlled pattern Input task will be developed rapidly. Similarly the other aspects will be developed like this and will together form the overall framework, which will develop as an evolutionary prototype. Each aspect of the system will be developed using a RAD approach and then modified, this will include the database development, the input component and the output component. The evolutionary prototype will allow for any bugs to be corrected during the development instead of detecting and correcting them during the testing phase. Tools and Applications Database Systems The system involves the use of a lot of information, some which will be needed several times and the most appropriate form of storage of this data is in a database. This will allow data to be saved from input to the system and retrieved to be used by the system. As an important aspect of this project is use of Time Control System. In this section several databases are reviewed for their suitability to this project. Microsoft Access Microsoft Access is Bundles of RDBS with the Microsoft Office. MS Access is widely spread on the windows based PCs. It is dependent on the windows environment therefore it cant be deployed on the Linux or UNIX environment. MS access has a GUI, Which facilitates creating the database tables and their relations, queries, forms and reports. MS Access is one of the best selling databases and it has a lot of support available from Microsoft and this is likely to remain so in the future [13]. MS access has disadvantages. It has data limit of 2GB. It is not ideal to use on the network. MS access has lax security measures to prevent the unauthorized access. These disadvantages would be an issue for this project as the system is likely to be accessed by a multiple users at a time and multimedia files will be run on it, it is very likely to exceed 2GB in size. There is a possible security risk of an MS Access database due to it being stored as a single file if un-trusted sources gain access to the folder it is contained in [14]. Most important drawback of MS Access is that lack of network support. ENB is totally depending on Network environment for communication which is by no means supported by MS Access. MS SQL Server MS SQL Server has been developed by Microsoft and it is their more expensive but more robust alternative to MS Access. MS SQL Server is more commonly used by businesses for small to medium sized databases. MS SQL Server is a high performance database with a bundle of functionality and it also has built in security features for LAN/WAN and web environment. There are free express versions of MS SQL Server that can be downloaded for free, however free versions offer less in functionality [15]. MS SQL Server utilizes Transact-SQL as its primary query language. MS SQL Server allows procedures to be stored within the database comparable to MS Access queries. This reduces load on the network bandwidth because only the variables are sent to the data along with the related procedures to be executed not the entire queries. This method is useful for the regular database queries. The method also protects the database from the injection attacks [16]. Sql server has the following disadvantages. It can only work on Windows environment Professional and Enterprise editions has costly license fee As far the ENB project the Enterprise edition is not required. MySQL MySQL is free open source relational database management system. MySQL is the most popular open source database due to its high performance [17]. MySQL has compatibility with any operating system including Linux, UNIX, Mac and Windows. It can also handle large amounts of data and provides security through user authorization and access privileges [18]. MySQL was designed to use on the internet, due to the high performance and very advance features MySQL is a favourite database for the desktop applications. A disadvantage of MySQL is that it is not ideal to set foreign key references [19]. PostgreSQL PostgreSQL is also an open source RDBMS, it is a platform independent database management system analogous to MySQL, however it has more advance features such as triggers. On implementing all features PostgreSQL performance is slower as compare to MySQL. PostgreSQL is the database of many high profile applications such as Skype and Hi5.com. PostgreSQL database design is more complex than MySQL. Performance of PostgreSQL is relatively slow [19]. Chosen Database Management System On reviewing the above database systems the following analysis are being concluded. Ms Access has been discarded from the selection list. It has no support for the network environment. Due to the network oriented nature of the ENB project the network performance is the core issue. Network performance cant be compromised. It will jeopardize the overall functionality of the project during the network load times. PostgreSQL has similar feature as MySQL. Both are discarded on the grounds of limited GUI support for development and maintenance. Both are not closely integrated with MS VB.Net. MS SQL server 2008 Express editions has been decided to be used as database platform for the ENB project. SQL Server 2008 Express is a correct choice for project to include Multimedia database services. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is a relational model database server produced by Microsoft. Its primary query languages are T-SQL and ANSI SQL. Due to the limited scoop of the ENB application I will use MS SQL Express Edition. Microsoft SQL Server Express is available at no cost. SQL Server Express edition relational database management system, comprises a database is limited for embedded and smaller-scale applications. Database engine is limited to receive work from a small number of users. It has several technical limitations; therefore it cant be deployed in the enterprise environment. Maximum database size of 4 GB per database. The 4 GB limit applies per database (log files excluded); but in some scenarios users can access more data through the use of multiple interconnected databases. It has the several advantages. The advantages are listed in the following lines. Its free of cost SQL server express edition has all the features required for my ENB project. SQL server express edition has Management studio. Limited support for multiple clients on LAN. SQL management studio will simplify the management and maintenance of the ENB database. Most of the IT technician and administrators are well versed with the MS SQL server. GUI tools will allow administrator to easily troubleshoot the common database issues. Main reason for selecting the SQL server is the TCP/IP pipes. TCP/IP pipes technology is very efficient on network as compare to the traditional TCP/IP packets. Programming Environments An appropriate programming environment is required for the system development. The programming tool must be capable to develop the graphical user interface to display the understandable output to the end user. In the ENB project the end user will the system administrator. It has been selected that MS SQL Server will be used to store the Database so the Programming tool must be able to interact with the MS SQL database. The chosen language should include support for object-oriented implementations. Booch (1998) stated Each object can be viewed as an independent little machine with a distinct role or responsibility [20]. Objected oriented language would allow efficient data parsing. The development in the high level programming tool is simpler than coding in the low level programming environment. Indeed high level programming tool reduces the cost of development as well the time spent on coding. Some of the programming environments are analyzed in the detail. Java Java is an object oriented programming language, developed by Sun Microsystems [21]. Java is a well accepted high-level language. ICN students study java during the firs