Koble is a mobile application developed to enhance communication and community members interaction in a collegiate environment. Phase 1 of Koble enhances the typical collegiate environment and improves the mode of communication between the students and the faculty. Resembling a traditional calendar based application, students will be able to send appointment requests to faculties and teaching assistants while tracking their schedules. Along with this the faculty will be able to initiate a chat with the student body to clarify any small doubts that the student has in the respective subject. The students will also be able to chat with their entire class without any barriers. Koble will also help track and inform students about any changes regarding faculty office hours and classes.
The phase 1 of the application has been broken down into 4 fundamental functions.
Registration Process - There are two login portals - for the student and for the faculty respectively. Registration will involve creating an account themselves by submitting basic information such as Name, Date of Birth, Email Address, Major, University and Department. The faculty/student can then sync the in-app calendar with their Apple or Google Calendar, importing all other events in their daily life. The faculty then creates a class that he/she is teaching in the present semester (faculty can create multiples class). This will be just like creating a regular calendar event which is recurring throughout the semester with a blank field where he will have to enter his regular office hour times. Upon creation, the application generate an alphanumeric code which the faculty can provide to all students on day one. Students can then join the class (students can join multiple classes) by simply entering the code, whereby subscribing to the class schedule and the faculty’s office hours.
Appointment Scheduling - If students requires to meet faculty members, they will simply navigate to the faculty’s profile wherein they can avail the “Appointments” option. A 7 day selector with all the times that the faculty is free(does not have any calendar events) will be shown where the student can select 30 minute slots. Office Hours will be shown in green and all other events in red, denoting the selectable slots. A short description will be required from the student as well. Upon submission, the faculty member will be notified and given the options to “Accept”, “Decline” or “Resolve via Chat”. If the faculty accepts then the “Appointment” will be added to both the student and faculty’s calendar.
Resolve via Chat - Faculty members will have a third option when they receive an appointment request from a student. If after reading the description, faculty members feel that they can resolve the issue over chat rather than meeting the student in person, then they can avail the “Resolve via Chat” option. A chat page will open up between the student and the faculty with a chat resolved button on the faculty end. Once clicked, the student will be unable to send messages to the faculty, but will be able to refer back to the message trail whenever. This will allow only the faculty members control over who can communicate with them directly and prevent innumerable notifications from any and every student.
Office Hours - Office hours will be synced automatically onto the student’s calendar once the faculty member is added via the unique code. Any change that any faculty makes to their office hour event, will be updated on all the subscribed students calendar. Students will be made aware of changes to rooms, timings and cancellations via push notifications. This will make students aware of changes to office hours.
Group Chat - The group chat will serve as a regular group chat function between students in a particular class. Faculty members will not be a part of this group chat. Students will be added to chat groups automatically when subscribing to classes via the unique code.