While teachers remain to be the primary facilitator of learning in every level of education, peer tutoring among students of same age brackets have received positive reviews from educators all around the world as an intervention
The academic support of schools provides tutorials to students struggling in a course and students having difficulties keeping up grades to maintain scholarship. Students who would like to avail of the tutorial service of the school can make an appointment through emails to their academic support personnel
Moreover, existing methods still raised questions such as whether or not it could be safe for both the tutor and tutee and none of the existing scheduling systems have addressed this concern
Hence, this study is designed to develop GrabTutor, A Web and Mobile Application for Tutor Appointment System with GPS Security Feature that will provide a new rendezvous of tutors through which a tutee can select based on his/her preferences before setting an appointment for a face-to-face tutorial. GrabTutor will provide a list of available tutors with their expertise alongside with the performance ratings from previous tutees. Specifically, the study aims to (1) develop a mobile application for tutorial appointments that present the tutees ample information about the tutors to assist them in looking for appropriate tutor that would best fit their academic needs, (2) integrate location tracking system to pinpoint the tutorial session’s location within the school premises, and (3) test and evaluate the proposed system in terms of usability and functionality.
The system architecture of the GrabTutor as shown in
The system has three (3) process flow. These are the Student Tutor Application Process, Student Tutor Application to Tutee’s post, and Tutor and Tutee Tutorial Session.
Database design is the process of producing a detailed data model of a database.
The primary key of the subject area table is SubjectAreaID. It is used to connect 2 tables namely: tutorials table and subject options. The tutorials table consists of the information of the tutee and the details of the tutorial. The committed tutorials table consists of the time and date of tutorial session, and the location (longitude and latitude) of the tutee in order to get the location of the tutor from the database that will be fetched by the web application to plot it in the map.
In order for tutees to gain access to available tutors conveniently, a hybrid mobile was developed. It is an android application that connects to the database server hosted in the cloud. It was developed using Android SDK and Cordova. It presents a variety of feature for both tutees and tutors as an implementation of the three (3) process flow in Section 2.1.
Essentially, the mobile application is secured with an authentication mechanism through the login page as shown in
During the meet up, the tutor will need to scan the barcode in the mobile app of the tutee in order to trigger the timer, which indicates that the actual tutorial has started as shown in
The mobile application is intended for the tutees and tutors. Meanwhile, the web application was created for the moderator of the system. It was developed using Code Igniter PHP Framework, JavaScript and Google Location API. It is granted with administrative access that allows the moderator to manage tutor and tutee applications and requests respectively. It primarily serves as a monitoring tool for tutor and tutee activities within the system and most importantly, keep track of their location as the tutorial happens.
In order to ensure that only the moderator can access the system, an authentication mechanism is also set in place as shown in
GPS location tracking is a distinctive feature of this tutorial appointment system. Through the Google Location API, the web application has the ability to fetch the location of tutors and tutees inside a school campus. The GPS tracking is triggered when the barcode in the mobile application of the tutee is scanned by the tutor’s mobile application which indicates that the actual face to face started already. The latitude and longitude of the current location of the tutorial is sent automatically to the mobile application. This feature adds a new dimension of security that would ensure students safety for the best interest of parents.
The system was developed to provide students with a tutorial booking mobile application with a GPS monitoring system that not only makes booking appointments with a tutor easier but also ensures safety of students both tutor and tutee. Based on the results of the evaluation of usability and functionality, the researchers conclude that the system makes it much easier for students to book an appointment with the mobile application by recommending the qualified tutors in an instant. The respondents also agree that the location tracking system could alleviate the risk of having to go somewhere else to meet up with a tutor.
The authors acknowledge the University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines for providing the resources that needed for this project.