Design of Digital Platform for Assignment Submission

GETITDONE.COM

1. Executive Summary

GETITDONE.com is a digital platform which is designed to provide a complete environment to develop, manage and submit any assignment for the university students with the help of professional tools and resources. We have found the key areas where students are facing problem in developing any assignment and have provided the ultimate solution to do so. Different parties, such as students, universities, tutors and service providers are involved in this product to make it specific and efficient. By doing that it can save a lot of time for university students by eliminating efforts of finding resources at different places. It also provides the real time similarity report with the online materials and similarity ratio with other university students when needed after saving the work on the secure cloud platform. The product uses different APIs to provide all the functionalities in one place. Users can also interact with tutors by just simply tagging them in their work as and when needed. It will have a functionality to submit any particular assignment sorted by subject to be submitted directly to Turnitin. The product is based on subscription plan where users have to register with their student IDs. Initially, some services for a month will be provided as free and then users will have to choose the subscription plan according to their needs.

2. Introduction to Innovation

Getitdone.com is a cloud based service which unites workflow, to help students manage, develop and submit their assignments on time with professional content and tools. It would be developed using existing cloud based tools on document management and learning management such as Blackboard and others.

• Students will register using their student ID’s and would be granted a free service for a month and upon finding the website useful would then go for a subscription for a period of time which would be inexpensive.
• The website platform would contain secure cloud based storage, certain references to solve a particular kind of assignment or thesis, these references would be derived from senior students based on their usage and success rate.
• Students can utilize the online Document readers and editors (word, excel, ppt) to do their assignments also with added tools derived from online extensions.
• Students can store the assignments on the platform, and these would be checked for similarity and upon the student logging in next time he/she would be notified on the similarity ratio and the steps they could follow to reduce the same.
•   The website will also feature a community where students from the similar courses / streams can interact with each other and help each other out on a particular assignment.
• Personal Profile page which shows the number of assignments due along with the date and time which would be synced from blackboard.
• Students can also do group assignments on the website by having closed groups with their team members and completing the assignment on the same.
• Community can also contain Professors who can answer the very doubts and question on an assignment by a student.
• Ability to submit assignments directly from Turnitin by adding another option to directly fetch the particular assignment from getitdone.com making it hassle free for students and avoiding confusions between links of submissions on Blackboard.

The value to students are:

• Time Saver – It would reduce the time for the students in completing various tasks such navigating to another website for creating graphs or getting references pertaining to their assignments as the same would be available at one place.
• Expense Saver – It would also reduce the expenses for the students as when they navigate to another website or use another tool to perform the various tasks, the same would be subscription-based. Since the first month of getitdone.com is free and the subscription for the forthcoming months are cheap, it would reduce the above-mentioned expenses of the students.
• Quick Interaction – It would enable the students to interact with their professors or seniors from the same course as everyone would be members of a particular community according to their course and study area. Questions asked by the students online could be clarified then and there with due feedback received without needing to meet the concerned persons directly.

3. Personas

4. Journey map for one of selected sides (student side shown)

5. Scenarios

Scenario-1

Its 2 weeks before the assignment submission and Leow wants help in terms of the quality of his content, such as getting the proper resource materials in a short amount of time, so that he can save time and focus on building his assignment draft. He opens a browser on his laptop and searches for materials online that would help him get his assignment done. He observes unfortunately that most of the services require monthly subscription which are very expensive. Also, since most of the tools are not available at a single place he observes that he is wasting considerable amount of time navigating to several websites to find the same. That’s when he comes across getitdone.com

He registers into the website and is happy to find that the subscription for the first month is free. He then proceeds to check the various tools in the website and is happy to find that he has found everything he needs. Leow is now under less pressure since he has all the resource materials his disposal.

Scenario – 2

It’s a week before the assignment submission and Leow is at his relative’s house attending a function there. When the function has ended, Leow wants to start working on his assignment as the due date is near. Unfortunately, he does not have his personal laptop with him. But, as he has registered onto getitdone.com, he would be able to access and edit his assignment from any other non-personal devices by logging in. Loew’s document would be stored on the website’s cloud storage system, which allows him to access or edit it on the go.

Scenario – 3

The deadline is approaching rapidly and Jane has no clue on what has to be done. She is also short on utilities required to work on the assignment effectively in a short time. She is mainly concerned on completing the assignment in an effective way so that she has a less similarity ratio and overall good quality of the content. This when she hears about getitdone.com and upon looking at the features the website had to offer on its homepage, she decided to register herself. After adding her course details and the assignment topic, all the required utilities were brought to her in the website as a suggestion. She is now less worried because she has the resources such as the tools required to developing diagrams or graphs, checking for plagiarism. She is able to access everything at the same place and can now start her assignment and complete the same before her deadline.

Scenario – 4

As Jane was working on her assignment, she was having some queries regarding the assignment and she needed immediate help from her tutor or peers to get them clarified before she could proceed further. She did not have the contact details of any of her faculty members or her peers. Jane then logged onto her getitdone.com account where she was able to seek help from her tutors or peers through the online chat portal in the website. This helped her clarify doubts regarding the content of the assignment and its structure. She felt much more confident in her approach to the case study and even got a few useful tips from her tutors sitting at home. This saved her precious time in writing an email and waiting for a response.

6. SLI Matrix:

7. Customer Dominant Logic

1. Related Activities

History: The current website getitdone.com is built based on an older version of the website that only allowed access to submit assignments and view the similarity percentage of the same after submission. In the past, students were facing difficulty in referencing, creating graphs, pie charts, and flow diagrams etc. which were not possible in the previous version of the website. This increased the time taken for students to complete their assignments and they had to depend on multiple sources to get help with the same. With getitdone.com students can get help with multiple utilities that support them during the course of their assignment completion.

Pre-Service: During the course of their assignments, the students were facing difficulties in referencing as they sought help from multiple sources like journals, blogs, websites, books etc. They preferred to also be able to work on their assignments remotely so that they are not restricted to their personal computers alone which gives them the flexibility to work on any device. The students also needed help in creating graphs, infographics, pie charts, histograms etc., to prepare a data-rich report. They also needed help from their tutors and peers as and when they are working on their assessment for a timely feedback and to ensure they are on the right track.

Post-Service: With help from getitdone.com, most of the problems faced by students were resolved. They no longer faced difficulties in referencing as the website’s in-built referencing tool helped them to reference the resources in the correct APA style format. They were also able to work on their assignments remotely when required. The website also has in-built tools to help with creation of charts, graphs and diagrams which helped students to support their written content thus making them more understandable.

Future: There is scope to enhance the user experience of the website through adding notifications regarding assignment due dates, communication from lecturers and tutors regarding the assignment, and grades received in the assignments all displayed in the user’s home page. Also, the website could provide information regarding the availability of journals or research papers associated with the assignment in the university library along with the shelf number and section so that the student will not have any difficulty locating the reading material.

2. Unrelated Activities:

Pre-Service: As the semester draws to a close, students felt the need to apply for internships so as to gain some industry work experience during the vacation period. Meanwhile, for students in their final year looking for job opportunities after graduation, there was no facility which enabled students to do the same. Students also wanted to participate in some career-oriented workshops that could make them job-ready like building good communication skills and understanding the workplace culture.

Post-Service: The website getitdone.com allowed students to apply for internships and jobs as per their requirements. It addresses the concerns of students seeking some industry exposure and can also save resume of students on its database without them having to upload from the local directory every time they applied for a job. Students could also register for various workshops organised in the university through the website itself.

Future: After graduation, getitdone.com can still help the users. The users can make a link for their work done on the website for particular topic including grading report for the same. They can then attach that link to their resume or submit that to show the efficiency of work has been done for that topic. This will help them to demonstrate their skills for future internship or job opportunities.

8. Business Model Canvas:

Business Model Canvas for getitdone.com

9. Reflection

According to Rogers, relative advantage is defined as the “degree to which the innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes. It refers to the extent to which the innovation is more productive, efficient, costs less, or improves in some other manner upon existing practices”(Rogers). The relative advantage this website would have over other similar online assignment submission websites such as Blackboard would be the significant reduction in time and effort needed by the student when doing their assignments due to the presence of the necessary tools/resources at one place. This would enhance the productivity of the students while at the same time incur less subscription fees from them(5.6 Rogers’ Characteristics of Innovation and Consumers). Another feature that would further increase the relative advantage would be the personalized experience each university student would have when logging into the website as he/she would be able to view reference materials and tools/templates specific to his/her subject.

Trialability, as defined by Rogers, is “the degree to which an innovation may be experimented on a limited basis”(Rogers). In terms of getitdone.com, the same could be made possible through the release of a trial or beta version of the website where the student would be able to access and utilize some of the features of the website. Hence, through this process of ‘learning by doing’, the student would gain an idea on the major utilities of the website and would thus have less uncertainty with regards to the same. Depending on whether he/she likes or dislikes these features, the student can decide on either upgrading to a full subscription or discontinuing the same. Trialability can be further increased by adding a link to a tutorial in the beta website version. This would provide to the students, a general overview on all the tools/templates/reference materials in the website once the same is fully operational. On completing the tutorial, the students would gain a better understanding of the website’s functionalities and would get more clarity on whether to subscribe to its services once the same is officially launched(Yocco, 2015).

The definition of observability , as per Rogers, is the “the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others”(Rogers). Observability can be enhanced for the website before it is launched in the form of advertisements and word-of-mouth marketing. Before launching the website, ads can be posted on social media clearly demonstrating to the students the relative advantages this website has over other similar websites in the case of reduction of time and effort when doing assignments. Billboards could be placed in locations within the university campus to generate curiosity amongst the students. Interested students would be invited to try out the beta version of the website. Based on their testimonials and online reviews, it would be possible for the website to reach a larger student audience(Yocco, 2015).

Rogers has defined compatibility as “the degree to which the innovation is perceived as being consistent with existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters”(Rogers). Since at present, students have access to high speed Internet, the website could provide cloud hosting services where they could access or edit their assignments from any device. This innovation design would have been a failure if introduced previously as the necessary infrastructure was not present at that time for accessing the Internet. At present, this would be compatible with the student’s needs.

Commitment occurs when the students become loyal to the website and utilize its services frequently. The same can be gained from the users by attaching an emotional, conditional and monetary value to the same. Emotional value can be gained by making the student’s process of doing the assignments fun-filled and stress-free. Whenever a student is mentally tired when doing the assignment, he or she can click on a link in the website and be directed to some fun puzzles or quizzes related to the current subject. The content in these puzzles could be questions from the previous exam papers. In this way, the student would enjoy the learning process. Conditional value would be obtained as the students would be able to access and edit their assignments from any device via the cloud-hosted website. Monetary value can be promoted by providing incentives, rewards or subscription discounts when a student’s friend subscribes to the website or when a student completes a major portion of his assignment (Riel, 2005).

Data-analytics can be used towards the development of an assignment submission model with the help of descriptive, prescriptive and predictive analytics. As the website would be having a tie-up with the university, by using descriptive analytics, it would be able to find out the subjects for which the previous students have needed help in assignment submission the most number of times in the past and the reasons for the same. If the subject is tough for most students, the website should store more reference materials and online trainings for the same. So, when a current student accesses this subject in the website, links should be provided to external training websites like Lynda.com so that he/she could learn the subject basics there. In this way, the student should be able to overcome the initial difficulties associated with this subject (Yanqing Duan, 2015).Predictive analytics can be used in this website by analysing the comments/reviews the students post in social media with regards to their experiences on the website. Based on the same, the website should be able to predict if or not the user will cancel his/her subscription. The website can use prescriptive analytics to work on these predictions and suggest remedies. One such way is for the website to provide offers/incentives to the students the day his/her subscription expires so as to reduce the risk and making sure they will remain loyal to the website (Khan, 2017).

Evaluation can be done for the website in the ex-ante and ex-post phases of innovation.

For the Ex Ante phase (before the website design) and the Ex Post phase (after the website design) a Naturalistic evaluation method can be done.

This could be achieved by conducting surveys and obtaining the required data from the students on what they would like and dislike and update the platform based on the same. (Etherington, 2014)

Participant observation: -The website design team could sit along with a selected group of students who have registered or subscribed and note the experiences and issues they faced in the website(Participant Observation).

There is no limit for the improvements, therefore there are number of things we would do differently next time to provide better offering for customers and overall improvement to our product.

• Specific offering of services – Each university student would have different assignment completion needs, so the website could be modified to provide specific services to a specific topic as the they would have a tie-up with the university. Hence, the process of doing an assignment can be made easier for students.
• Providing an ultimate environment – Instead of just assignment completion, the website could be further designed to provide an environment where students can even prepare for the exams, such as mock tests and links to previous exam papers. Also, the students working in group assignments can have access to customised project management tools like trello.com where they can further track on each other’s tasks/deadlines more efficiently.
• Diversity in personas and scenarios – More personas and more kinds of scenarios could be created to observe the different innovation flows and have more ideas on the expected behaviour/output.
• Better Cost modelling – The Cost model could be modified to achieve maximum returns from the amount invested in this innovation.
• Online Counselling – The website could incorporate an ‘online counselling’ feature where students who are having difficulties in completing their assignments due to stress-related issues could chat real-time with the respective counsellors on the same.

References

1. Rogers, E. M.  Diffusion of Innovations. 4th (Ed.)(pp. 212-216). Retrieved from https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=v1ii4QsB7jIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR15&dq=rogers+characteristics+of+innovation+paper&ots=DLSxuKSp5O&sig=4CmoWrGIbpvvQFqz8Vi4QBt8BJ8#v=onepage&q=relative%20advantage&f=false

2. 5.6 ROGERS’ CHARACTERISTICS OF INNOVATION AND CONSUMERS. Retrieved from http://www.ruthtrumpold.id.au/destech/?page_id=797

3. Yocco, V. (2015). 5 Characteristics Of An Innovation. Smashing Magazine.

4. Yanqing Duan, G. C. (2015). Understanding the Impact of Business Analytics on Innovation, ECIS 2015 Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=ecis2015_cr

5. Khan, G. F. (2017). 4 types of social media analytics explained. Retrieved from https://www.analyticbridge.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/4-types-of-social-media-analytics-explained
6. A Business Model Canvas (2017). Retrieved from https://bmfiddle.com/

7. Etherington, D. (2014). Apple Sends Out iPhone Survey, Seeks Feedback On Android, Touch ID And More. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/21/apple-sends-out-iphone-survey-seeks-feedback-on-android-touch-id-and-more/

8. John Venable, J. P.-H., Richard Baskerville. (2012). A Comprehensive Framework for Evaluation in Design Science Research.

9. ParticipantObservation.Retrievedfromhttps://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/48454_ch_3.pdf.

10. Riel, A. C. R. v. (2005). Service innovation management. Managing Service Quality, 15. Retrieved fromhttps://books.google.com.au/books?id=zAFibhz9-30C&pg=PT40&lpg=PT40&dq=A+strategy+to+encourage+commitment+from+users+innovation&source=bl&ots=sB94yWG3R3&sig=xTmP3tMtCTDgkNKWVIYaeUlLxoc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX4Lu9mZjXAhWGuo8KHbbnBBQQ6AEIRzAF#v=onepage&q=commitment&f=false