Abstract:

In several university departments, especially in those of polytechnic schools, undergraduate students are required to work on a term-project during their last year of studies or even earlier as long as they have obtained a predefined quantity of ECTS units. This "final year project" is usually termed as diploma thesis and it is supervised by a faculty member assisted by two additional members, who can be faculty members or senior researchers. The administrative procedure includes two phases: first, thesis assignment and then, thesis assessment. In the thesis assignment phase, faculty members publicly announce projects within their area of expertise. Then, students declare their interest for one or more theses and expect acceptance or rejection of their proposal by the supervising faculty members. Once "student-faculty member" pairs are formed, students submit to the secretariat an official application, which, if approved by the faculty assembly, flags the completion of the thesis assignment phase. In the thesis assessment phase, supervisors submit to the secretariat of the department an official document where the successful assessment of a diploma thesis is stated and the approval of its completion is asked by the faculty assembly of the department. Once this approval is provided, the thesis assessment phase is completed. This time and effort-consuming two-phase procedure has been traditionally carried out via paper documents, often requiring the physical presence of the applicants at the Secretariat office. Shifting the completion of these administrative tasks online by eliminating the need for printouts and physical presence via increasing the use of ICT could highly facilitate and accelerate the workflow while simultaneously discharging students, faculty and the administrative personnel.

In this work, we present myThesis, an online system for simplifying the administrative procedure required for the management of diploma theses in a typical higher education institute. In particular, we designed and developed a platform available online where users, designated as students, faculty members or members of the administrative personnel of a university department, can log in and carry out, in a paperless manner, assignment, assessment and completion of diploma theses accoring to the regulatory framework currently in force. However, myThesis can be easily adapted to support the management of diploma theses at every level of studies or extended in order to embed any regulatory framework. myThesis does not use any platform or cms; it has been built using JavaScript, html and css together with php and sql for the management of its database. It is a lightweight, responsive system which can be easily accessed and used via any typical device (laptop, smartphone, tablet). It does not require sophisticated hardware/software or advanced computer skills for its users.

myThesis showcases how ICT and web technologies can contribute to discharging students, faculty and administrative personnel by facilitating and simplifying in an eco-friendly way the administrative procedure of the management of diploma theses saving person time and effort for more creative and demanding activities.

Keywords:

Online platform, management of diploma theses, student, faculty, secretariat, higher education institutes, responsive, ICT, web.