ABSTRACT

A Mobile Social Networking Application for Academics and for Collaborative Learning is an android social networking application and also a web based application designed for lecturers and students in the university for the purpose of having their lectures and class discussion on academic issues to improve collaborative learning among students even without physical presence. The objectives of this design were to have a closed system with higher security mechanism where only authorized users can have access into the forum, also to improve the method of disseminating information among students in a class through SMS notification, and to discipline students on their behaviour when using the social media. These objectives necessitated for a new design and implementation of mobile social networking application used in education. A hybrid methodology which comprises of Waterfall methodology and Object Oriented Analysis and Design Methodology (OOADM) were adopted in this work where some Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams were used to design the system architecture. Object Oriented Programming (OOP) php, mobincub library (which contain android APK), ASP (for the sms notification) with MySQL Server at its back-end were used to develop this system. The Mobile Social Networking Application for Academics and for Collaborative Learning named “DegreeMate15” is an android social networking application and also a web based application that provides the lecturer with an alternative environment for having lectures, students can also use the application to learn with each other thereby improving in learning anytime anywhere. The application also has the functionality that stores each lecture that was done in it with the time they were conducted, so as to assist students who may not have attended the lecture to read the lecture summary.