Principles of Software Engineering

Learning Outcomes Tested in this assessment:

The following learning outcomes will be assessed by this assignment:

1. Demonstrate critical knowledge and understanding of appropriate software engineering theories, technologies and methodologies
2. Ability to apply software engineering knowledge to a complex business challenge or project
3. Critically reflect on professional, legal, social, security and ethical issues related to the design, development and use of software in an organisational context.
4. Ability to critically evaluate your Software Engineering skills
5. Demonstrate problem solving skills in complex situations in the context of the design, development and use of software solution.

Assignment Overview:

The assignment is divided into two components as follows:

General description

Case Study: Durham College E-Learning Platform (DELP)

Durham college is a private school that provides a wide range of academic courses leading to internationally recognised qualifications in computing, business, travel & tourism management, hospitality management and healthcare.

The new director of Durham college has decided to move all of its teaching activities from their campus in the city into online learning platform in order to protect its students and staff from COVID‑19, which is an infectious disease that has resulted in an ongoing pandemic across the world.

Durham college ELP would be offering a complete learning experience that is rich with learning resources, fun, interactive, and ultimately engaging. Durham new ELP will provide a comprehensive integrated set of interactive online services that offer admins, tutors, learners, and others involved in education at Durham college with information, tools and resources to support and enhance students enrolment, education delivery, assessment and financial management.

The new ELP should be an innovative online learning management system (LMS) that allows Durham college staff to manage online courses including create, update, search, delete courses and assessment. The LMS should offer an interface to enable students to interact with the learning resources easily including finding and view learning content, complete tutorials and tasks, submit assignments via Turnitin and check their results. The system should offer parents the possibility to monitor their children progress and to communicate with the tutors. Admin team will be able to manage time tables, enrol students into courses and arrange staff-parents meetings. In addition they will be able to view if students fees payments are up to date via Sage service integrated with the MLS. Sage has been chose as it is a leading provider of enterprise resource planning software, which offer comprehensive accounting services, customer relationship management, inventory management and much more.

Simply, the purpose of the new e-learning platform for Durham college is that it creates a robust learning experience that feels like a classroom experience, offering the traditional classroom characteristics (like instructor-student interaction, Q&As, discussion, collaborative projects, quizzes, etc.), all of which will be running and managed online.

Task 1: Design and Development (50%, Learning Outcome 1 & 2 & 5)

Using the provided case study, develop a solution from a system analyst’s perspective that includes the following:

• Produce a use case diagram to model the functional requirements from the scenario narrative.
  • Showing actors and the use cases they perform.
  • Use inheritance where necessary of both use cases and actors.
  • Use of <<includes>> and <<extends>> where necessary.
  • Use house style model to document one primary use case.
• Produce a class diagram to model the system structure you propose for your potential solution. Decouple as much as possible with Boundary, Control and Entity classes. This should include:
  • Detailed classes with all key variables/attributes and datatypes with access modifiers (private, public or protected) clearly shown in adherence to encapsulation principal of OOP.
  • Procedures or functions with (parameters and their datatypes shown) as well as return type for the class functions. (see diagram example below)
  • Use of class relationships (e.g. dependency association, aggregation, composition and inheritance).

An example of a basic class diagram

• Produce a sequence diagram to model functional requirements from the scenario narrative for one primary use case.
  • Showing actors and interacting objects.
  • Messages (Methods) calls between objects with parameters and return types were necessary.
  • Use of alternatives and loops where necessary.

An example detailed sequence diagram

Program:

• Develop the proposed solution using OOP language (Java with NetBeans IDE). Produce a test plan and test cases. NOTE: The solution is only going to be a prototype of the software architect level but a skeletal code should be produced. You do not need to write advanced level functionality into the methods or permanent data storage but you must build and design the Forms (JFrames) and link them to each other with relevant GUI components such as buttons, text fields, labels etc.

Task 2: Reflection and Critical Evaluation: (50%, Learning Outcome 3 & 4)

You are required to write a reportthat contains a critical discussion, reflection and evaluation. Name your report using your user ID, e.g. w1612345report.

Given that, please address the following topics in your discussion:

• Using software engineering literature, critically evaluate the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodology you have chosen for your solution development with examples from your work.
• Critically reflect on professional, legal, social, security and ethical issues related to the design and development of your solution.

Your discussion for the practical solution commentary should contain 2000 words and for the critical evaluation 2000 words and should be presented in the form of a word document and submitted to eLP Blackboard.

This is meant to be a critical discussion and not just a description. Your discussion should not be limited to your practical system (the prototype), but a discussion of the broader issues involved in the design of your solution such as the functional requirements, use case documentation, the main classes involved in the class diagram and sequence diagram with justification of any important design decisions.

References

References must be used in order to strengthen any points that you raise in your discussion.

Your discussion must be your own words and, where you have used someone else’s words (quotations), they should be correctly quoted and referenced in accordance to the Harvard or APA System. If you require guidance on citation, please use the booklet ‘Cite Them Right’ available from the City Campus library.

The online Northumbria Library is a good source of references at this academic level as the Library subscribes to the leading information sources in Computing. Since Computer Science is highly dynamic, recent references to conference and journal papers from the last five years are preferred.

References are not included in the word count.

Additional Programming Requirements:

Your code must comply with the following requirements:

• OOP language – Java should be used as the programming language.
• Use NetBeans IDE
• The program should be executable (i.e. no compile time errors that prevent it from being executed).
• Project directory should be attached to your word document with the commentary in a zip file. Simply submitting individual .java files will receive a mark of Zero for the program section.
• Use meaningful naming conventions for variables, methods and classes.

Marking Scheme

The following marking scheme will be used for this assignment:

Practical Solution (50%)

Critical Discussion (50%)

Total Marks Available: 100

Academic Integrity Statement: You must adhere to the university regulations on academic conduct. Formal inquiry proceedings will be instigated if there is any suspicion of plagiarism or any other form of misconduct in your work. Refer to the University’s Assessment Regulations for Northumbria Awards if you are unclear as to the meaning of these terms. The latest copy is available on the University website.

(last accessed on 25^th August 2020)

Formative Feedback

There will be an opportunity for formative feedback during the semester. You are advised to start working on this assignment as early as possible so that you can seek clarification from the module tutor regarding any questions you might have during the semester. Note that tutors will not predict your grade, and you should not take the lack of comment on any aspect of your work as indicating that it is correct. You should make every effort to take advantage of formative feedback as tutors will not comment on draft work at other times. Remember that you will get more useful feedback from us by asking specific questions than just presenting us with your documentation and asking, ‘Is this right?’

Penalties for Exceeding Word Limits:

The following penalties will be applied after any reductions in mark due to late submission have been made, Penalties will be applied as defined in the University Policy on Word Limits Policy.

https://northumbria-cdn.azureedge.net/-/media/corporate-website/new-sitecore-gallery/services/academic-registry/documents/qte/assessment/guidance-for-students/pl013-v002-word-limits-policy.pdf?modified=20200803200335.

(last accessed on 25^th August 2020)

The actual word count is to be declared on the front of the assessment submission.

Late Submission Policy:

For coursework submitted up to 1 working day (24 hours) after the published hand-in deadline without approval, 10% of the total marks available for the assessment (i.e.100%) shall be deducted from the assessment mark. Penalties will be applied as defined in the University Policy on the Late submission work.

(last accessed on 25^th August 2020)

For clarity: a late piece of work that would have scored 65%, 55% or 45% had it been handed in on time will be awarded 55%, 45% or 35% respectively as 10% of the total available marks will have been deducted.

Failure to submit: The University requires all students to submit assessed coursework by the deadline stated in the assessment brief.  Where coursework is submitted without approval after the published hand-in deadline, penalties will be applied as defined in the University Policy on the Late Submission of Work.

(last accessed on 25^th August 2020)

Module Specific Assessment Criteria

Please see attached rubric