Design and development of an online postgraduate research students' progression monitoring tool - ProGRess

Abstract

Digital content and publishing provide easy and efficient access to standardized and up-to-date information. It also eliminates content replication, ensures accuracy, and provides information security. Due to the rapid increase of affordable digital tools and applications, most educational institutions have already been using virtual learning environments to support their staff, lecturers, and students. This paper proposes a novel, secure, user-friendly, web-based monitoring system, called ProGRess, which tracks the engagement and progression of postgraduate research students (PGRs). ProGRess is an online application designed and developed in-house using agile development methodology for the Doctoral College (DC) at Bournemouth University (BU) and is used to monitor PGR progression. This paper aims to assess how ProGRess helps manage and track the interactions for milestone completion between PGRs, supervisors, assessors, examiners, and postgraduate research administrators (PGRAs). Additionally, the paper explores the software and its multi-tier client-server architecture, including its front-end user interface, backend application, data services, and software security.