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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
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Background Accepting new student, from high school to university, from Primary school to
High school, has become one of several major businesses concerns for an educational Corporation. As the number of student are increasing, the competition among schools and university to “grab” students with high quality IQ and achievements, strategies have to be applied in order to achieve the target. One of the strategies is to locate the target market into a place, site, or community to make us easier to aim and penetrate the market. In this opportunity, I would like to explore one of the alternatives among many strategies for problem described above. Bina Nusantara International University (BI) has a plan to build an online community where high school students, especially those in the second and third grade, can interact, exchanging information, interest, issues, and discussing school’s subjects together with BI’s lecturer. 1.2
Perceived Problem Students nowadays are computer and internet literate, most of the time they can
browse through the internet to find solution, hints, theory explanation or practical application related to the subject they are learning inside the classroom. But sometimes, they are incapable in finding the relevance source in the internet. Other problem is when they are too “blind” to find explanation about universities, and afraid or confuse to ask to someone else. Bina Nusantara International University understands this situation and try to provide help for such stud ents. This is the main reason why BI is planning to create an online community. According to www.wikipedia.org, online community is a group of people that interact
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via various media, such as letter, telephone, email, or through a website rather than meeting face to face. Since the mechanism is a computer network based, it is called an online community. Another similar definition will be users who are widely dispersed geographically but come together in cyberspace based on similar interest. Online community can also be called forum in daily life. Forum is an online discussion group, where participants with common interests can exchange open messages. 1.3
Aimed Benefit This online community construction project has clear defined goals, both in
short and long term. In short term, this portal will gather students and becoming a central or a forum of discussion in various topics and interests. This portal will also serve as a source of information about BI’s available majors, concern of studies, lecturers, subject examples, programs, and BI campus life. In long term, BI expects this portal to be one of the main methods of promoting campus to high school students. To build a website, a community website to be precise, we have to understand the audience. In this case, the audience will be high school students. After we are clear with the audience, we shift to the user requirements. Understand the user requirement will help us in serving user to fulfill their desire and expectation. The methods used to collect user requirement are interview and create a questionnaire. In this opportunity, I will choose the questionnaire method since the number of sample will be in a big amount of people. 1.4
Proposed Approach The website itself will be constructed by the writer of this thesis. The
languages that are used in this project will be HTML language, PHP language, JavaScript, and .NET. The considerations for using these programming languages are first because these languages are the most familiar languages for web developing stage. The second reason will be because PHP can be the “bridge” to data transfer between various kinds of languages basis. The technology for the website development will cover using “Drupal” system. Drupal is a website builder that is based on PHP languages, MySQL Database, and HTML languages.
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The system itself will be adopting the waterfall model, since the prototype of this model will be launched on August, 16, 2007, approximately one month from the day this proposal is created. What is waterfall model? It is a project development that is sequential in which development is running as if it is moving downward, flowing like a
waterfall. Figure 1.1 Above picture is the basic scheme of waterfall model from www.wikipedia.org. The real scheme writer’s learn from Project Manager’s book, the stages will be described in seven steps: 1. Requirement specification 2. Design 3. Construction (coding) 4. Integration 5. Testing and debugging 6. Installation 7. Maintenance And documentation activity over all activities will be implemented.
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In this project, we are aiming the benefit from two sides. First is from user (high school students) point of view. We are delivering information about university, college and making them familiar with JWC and BI. The other benefit will be making this portal as a source of hints, and theory explanation or interpretation for various high school subjects, also becoming a place for high school students to hangout and discuss any topics. In BI point of view, this portal is expected to be the place where BI can introduce itself to high school students, and becoming familiar campus. In the long term, BI except this portal can be the media for promoting BI besides advertising and promotion from door to door (in this case school to school) 1.5
Estimated Required Resources In this project, we will need resources to be exploited. In human pat, we will
need an analyst that act as a system analyst and defining user requirement. BI will form a team consist of all Schools and IT staff, and will support this portal project. Financial resources will be supported by BI as the sponsor and client. First step of this project, according to waterfall model, is to define user requirement. User requirement will be the foundation of this project. We have to be precise and aware with user requirement. The reason for that is because by wrongly interpret the requirement, this website will be useless and may not answering user’s need. Later on, it will be a failed project. A set of questionnaire is created to gather the information needed for this project. Nama
:
Kelas
: (11 / 12)
(IPA / IPS)
Asal Sekolah :
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Frekuensi pemakaian internet perhari:
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a. 1 – 2 jam perhari
c. 4 – 6 jam perhari
b. 2 – 4 jam perhari
d. diatas 6 jam perhari
Website yg sering dikunjungi (2) 1. 2.
Prioritas kunjungan: (1 – 4, 1 untuk yang menjadi prioritas pertama, 4 untuk yang terakhir) ( ) browse tugas – tugas sekolah ( ) bermain online game ( ) mencari informasi universitas dalam atau luar negeri ( ) sekedar me ngisi waktu luang (pleasure) ( ) lain – lain: (silahkan isi) …………
2.
Pernahkah kamu mengakses dan menggunakan feature- feature pada website komunitas (community website) ?Bila ya, sebutkan website yang kamu kunjungi. contoh: Kaskus, Chip Online, LigaGame, VGI, etc.
Apakah kamu menjadi anggota pada forum tersebut?
3.
Apa ada kekurangan dari website tersebut? Bila ada, apakah kekurangannya?
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( ) Loading time yang lama ( ) Terlalu banyak iklan ( ) Design yang monoton dan kurang menarik ( ) Feature kurang lengkap ( ) Lain – lain: (silahkan isi) ……………..
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Kalo ada forum yang mau buat community website didedikasikan untuk anak – anak SMA seperti kamu, feature - feature apa aja yang kamu harapkan ada di website tersebut? (silahkan pilih 4 dengan memberi tanda silang (X) pada nomor – nomor opsi dibawah ini )
1. Blog 2. Chat 3. Forum diskusi pelajaran (tanya2 tentang tugas, PR, ujian, etc) 4. Forum diskusi Universitas, Sekolah Tinggi 5. Forum Overseas University (Sekolah diluar negeri) 6. Forum Jual Beli (electronic gadget (HP, camera, laptop, pc, gaming console),otomotif, clothing, musical instrument) 7. Forum diskusi lain2 (sport, movie, HP and PDA, games, otomotif, Love, Music, Food, religious issues) 8. Jokes 9. Event2 edukasi, Pensi, Sport events (High School) 10. E- mail 11. Mailing list
5.
Bila feature – feature tersebut ada di dalam suatu website, apakah kamu bersedia bergabung menjadi anggota website tersebut?
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>>> God Bless You Figure 1.2
