Team Name
MavAssist & MavTime
Timeline
January 2025 – August 2025
Students
MavAssist
- Jose Trulin – Computer Science
- Rajesh Khadka – Computer Science
- Trevor Smith – Computer Science
- Nivea Mabeya – Computer Science
- Daniel Bonta – Computer Science
MavTime
- Hector Trevino – Computer Science
- Grace Daily – Software Engineering
- Jemimah Ogunderu – Computer Science
Sponsor
Dr. Marika Apostolova
Abstract
The BugHouse is a secure, responsive, and user-friendly tutoring website for the CSE Student Success Center at UTA. Building upon the legacy of the TutorTech team, our team implemented major enhancements including magnetic stripe ID swipe time tracking, improved tutor-student matching, AWS SNS-based notifications, and advanced reporting tools for administrators.
Background
The CSE department previously lacked a centralized, automated tutoring platform, making it hard for students to find tutors and manage their sessions. They are either using manual or paper-based tracking, which makes it inefficient for all parties involved. The BugHouse addresses these issues by creating a unified system with updated scheduling logic, magnetic stripe ID authentication, and detailed reports for administrators.
Project Requirements
- Adding classes to the database – All CSE courses have been added to the database with the expansion of adding, deleting, and managing courses on the admin side.
- Swipe time tracking – After a session is scheduled, students and tutors can either check in or check out of sessions, and it is viewable on the admin side.
- Updated scheduling logic – After adding all courses, this allows matching with tutors based on specific classes needed and an updated calendar view.
- Updated user management – Admins can review and accept new applicants to become tutors.
- Advanced Reports – Added additional reports for admins to view statistics of individual students or tutors.
- SNS Notifications – Using AWS SNS, this enables further use of notifications to clarify session details.
- Added “No-Show” status – Tutors can mark students as no-shows and will update the status of that session.
- Cancelled Notifications – After a tutor cancels a session, both the student and tutor will receive a notification of the updated status.
- Tutor Reviews – Admins can view tutor reviews left by students and can inspect the feedback.
- Mass email tool – Admins can now send major announcements about the BugHouse to all students or tutors.
- Forgot my password – All users now have the capability of resetting their password when needed.
Design Constraints
- Platform Compatibility – The system must be capable of being accessed through various web browsers on Windows and Mac.
- FERPA Compliance – Since the platform handles student academic data, all designs and implementations must comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to ensure privacy and secure handling of every student registered.
- Maintainability of legacy systems – Since this may be inherited by future students, the repository of code must be clean, modular, and well-documented.
- Timing – The project must be completed by August 2025, offering limited time and establishing requirements early on.
- Integrating with UTA – The platform must be equipped with the physical magnetic card swiper and AWS services for SNS.
Engineering Standards
- Authentication & Encryption Standards (Secure password storage, ID card encryption)
- Programming Standards (React.js, Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB)
- Open Source Development Standards (GitHub)
- System Architecture Patterns (MERN 3-tier architecture)
- Database Design using Mongoose ODM schemas
- ISO-style documentation and SRS compliance
- ISO 4909 – Magnetic Stripe / Cards
- ISO 5807 – Flowcharts
- ISO 13249 – Databases
- ISO 20802 – ODATA and JSON
System Overview
The system uses a three-layer architecture that includes the backend layer, frontend layer, and database layer built on the MERN stack. The backend layer is responsible for routing API requests, validating user input, managing session statuses, sending notifications via SNS, and access control based on user roles. The frontend layer for user interactions includes resetting passwords, scheduling sessions with specific courses, checking in/out, viewing tutor availability, viewing tutor feedback, and accessing advanced reports. The database stores collections that include attendances, courses, feedback, notifications, sessions, student/tutor profiles, and all users.
Results
The BugHouse platform was improved with several major enhancements over the original legacy system, including but not limited to improved scheduling, session tracking, and communication. The updated system provides additional tools for all users and creates a user-friendly environment. These results were obtained after gaining feedback from the stakeholders, including our sponsor.
Future Work
While the updated Bughouse website meets current requirements, several features can be implemented to improve the functionality. One potential feature can be integrating Outlook calendar synchronization, which allows students and tutors to automatically view their session status through the UTA email calendar. The feature of sending emails to students who applied to be tutors would be an enhancement for the admin to follow up with applicants. Some other additional features would be mobile view development, updating the UI, and exporting all reports/resources, which would improve the efficiency of the system.
Project Files
Project Charter
System Requirements Specification
Architectural Design Specification
Detailed Design Specification
Poster
References
[1] MERN Stack Guide – MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js
[2] ISO Software Engineering Standards
[3] McDermott, Steven. “TutorTech.” CSE Senior Design, 6 May 2025, websites.uta.edu/cseseniordesign/2025/05/06/tutortech/.
[4] Amazon Web Services, “Amazon SNS – Mobile phone number as subscriber,”https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/sns-mobile-phone-number-as-subscriber.html, 2025.
