Abstract

Doing TA assignment manually is a tedious and error-prone process, which means it is not only time-consuming but also susceptible to human errors such as schedule conflicts, multiple assignments and overload assignments. Teaching Assistant Assignment Planner (TAAP)--a software tool implemented using Java in Windows environment--facilitates the process of doing TA assignment. It is a semi-automatic software system, which helps to promote staff productivity, eliminate human errors and generate status reports. Both the TAAP design and implementation are presented in this major report. The issues to be addressed are environment setup, requirement analysis, detailed design, final implementation and improvement suggestion. Environment setup identifies the hardware and software requirements along with some useful background information. Requirement analysis defines the database scheme to be used, explores the system functionality and performs the task analysis. Detailed design presents the MVC design pattern, explains how MVC is being applied, and elaborates the design detail in the UML notations. Final implementation only covers critical coding issues such as database access from Java, data representation in GUI and database manipulation. The improvement suggestion sheds the light for the future improvement of TAAP, e.g. the migration to a web-based application.