Team Name
Third Time’s A Charm
Timeline
Spring 2023 – Summer 2023
Students
- David Goodrich
- Adewale Oyedele
- Vinh Dao
- Dawit Tekle
- Tam Nguyen
Sponsor
UTA School of Social Work
Abstract
In order to fulfill their graduation requirements, students at the College of Social Work are required to undertake fieldwork with local agencies in the Dallas-Forth Worth area. This necessitates a dependable and user-friendly application that can efficiently manage student placements and supervision throughout their fieldwork experience.
Smart Placement aims to revolutionize the fieldwork placement process by offering seamless, intuitive, and user-centric platform for all users involved. Our primary goal is to simplify the necessary tasks each user must complete, reducing the number of clicks and making the process as straightforward as possible. By placing the user experience at the forefront of our development process, Smart Placement significantly improves the overall user experience for students, faculty, and agency partners.
Background
Smart Placement is a web-based application, developed in conjunction with the College of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington. This application is purpose-built to cater the needs of four key user groups: administrators, agencies, field instructors, and students.
The platform enables agencies to initiate requests for student placements, defining their unique requirements in the process. Students, on the other hand, could apply to these agencies by indicating their top three areas of interest.
The system integrates a specialized algorithm used by administrators to optimally match students with agencies, taking into consideration the preferences and requirements of both parties. Following successful matching, students are required to submit documents and partake in agency interviews before the confirmation of their placements.
During their fieldwork, the platform provides functionalities for students to log timesheets and daily activities. Simultaneously, field instructors can review, give feedback, and grade these student reports.
In essence, Smart Placement is committed to streamlining the often intricate process of student-agency matching for fieldwork opportunities and ensuring a supportive, efficient, and user-friendly experience through the placement journey.
Project Requirements
- Agencies’ ability to sign up and make applications to UTA School of Social Work Administration.
- UTA School of Social Work students’ ability to sign up and make applications for fieldwork.
- UTA School of Social Work’s ability to review, approve, or disapprove applications from agencies and students.
- Administrator’s ability to view information of students and agencies.
- Approved agencies’ ability to request specific type and number of students.
- UTA School of Social Work Administrator’s ability to match students with agencies.
- Students’ and agencies’ abilities to upload Learning and Agency Contract documents, respectively.
- UTA School of Social Work Administrator’s ability to receive notifications of contract document and applications.
- Students’ ability to log their field time and view progress.
- Agencies’ ability to assign field instructors and assigned field instructors can view and approve time logs of students.
- UTA MyMav integration with Smart Placement app for student progress and grades.
System Overview
The system consists mainly of four layers: Agency, Field Instructor, Student, and Administrator. These layers communicate and interact with one another and a database via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Results
Significant strides have been made in the development of Smart Placement, making it a robust and scalable web app. The application current has several functional features, including specialized upload pages for student learning and agency contracts, automated upload notifications sent to admin, comprehensive help pages for all user categories, and solid error handling system. Several minor and major bugs were addressed to a point where the application can be reliably used by students, agencies, field instructors, and administrators.
Future Work
Looking forward, there are still some functionalities that need to be implemented to ensure the application’s full potential is realized. Absence of some of these features can be attributed to lack of direct guidance and specific user needs from sponsor. For example, access must be granted to MyMav to retrieve student data, validation to confirm that third-party agencies are located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, user-switching functionality, contract review page, and input validation are likely future work to be implemented. Once more feedback and specifics are provided by UTA School of Social Work and users of the app, these functionalities can be built to align with the demands of end-users.
The future of this project is exciting, with much work to be done and even more potential for growth.
Project Files
Project Charter (TTAC Project Charter document)
System Requirements Specification (TTAC SRS document)
Architectural Design Specification (TTAC ADS document)
Detailed Design Specification (TTAC DDS document)
Poster (Demo poster)
