DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY

Bachelor of Information Systems Engineering (Honours) Information Systems Engineering Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (Kampar campus), UTAR. This is to certify that LOK XUAN WEN (ID No: __18ACB01205) has completed this final year project/dissertation/thesis* entitled “ MANAGEMENT OF CONSULTANCY SERVICES AND SOCIAL APPLICATION ” under the supervision of MS YAP SEOK GEE (Supervisor) from the Ministry of Information Systems, Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies. I understand that the University will upload an electronic copy of my Final Year Project / Dissertation / Thesis* in pdf format to the UTAR Institutional Repository, which will be readily accessible to the UTAR community and the public.

This project is a development based project with the aim of developing a website for counseling services management with an integration of social platform for the Guidance and Counseling Unit of UTAR Kampar. The methodology chosen for this project will be Extreme Programming (XP) and the application will be developed in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP using Visual Studio Code as the integrated development environment (IDE). Bachelor of Information Systems (Hons) Information Systems Engineering Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (Kampar Campus), UTAR.

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Background information

Students are often under pressure to be successful in their studies, suffer from financial stress and uncertainty about their future [1]. Due to the existing stigma and taboos in society, where mental health awareness is not given adequate attention, many students avoid seeking help from professionals [2]. A common stigma surrounding mental health in Asia is that mental illness is usually viewed as a supernatural phenomenon rather than a scientifically proven disorder, where this tends to encourage victims to seek help from the wrong sources, potentially making the situation worse [3] .

There are various types of counseling approaches offered by the counseling industry, whereas for UTAR Guidance and Counseling Unit, face-to-face counseling is often preferred over online counseling. 5] emphasized that the majority of university students choose online counseling because of the inconvenience of being physically present for face-to-face counseling. 6], close to 30% of adults aged 16 and above face acute mental health problems and have used Subtle Asian Mental Health, a Facebook group to share their mental conditions as well as to gain mutual support from the community .

Problem Statement and Motivation

Therefore, this project aims to develop a website by integrating the counseling management system and social platform together where both the counselors and students in UTAR can be easily reached as well as to increase the efficiency in managing each counseling session's details. To conclude, the current counseling approach adopted in UTAR's counseling unit is ineffective as the medium of delivery and clients' data management is not efficient. There is a diverse set of platforms in the provision of counseling services ranging from appointment process, therapy, follow-up session to customer feedback when the entire process should be conducted within a trusted platform for better user experience, which in this case leads to the customers' confusion and facilitates the counselors to manage their clients and counseling schedules.

When counseling sessions are done offline, physical documentation is needed to keep track of the details, while if the sessions are done in Google Forms, only the administrative staff responsible for exporting the data to the spreadsheet will have access to the reports. Existing counseling units in tertiary education focus on the counseling process provided by the counselor to students. However, it is equally important to build a social mental health community within counseling units that enables students to engage in peer support and mutual respect to validate their intersection with mental health.

Project Objectives

3 performed on Microsoft Teams or Facebook, depending on the platform with which both the learning path counselor and the student agreed. Bachelor of Information Systems (Honours) Information Systems Engineering Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (Kampar Campus), UTAR. 4 3) Developing an alternative approach to online counseling and social mental health.

Project Scope

Contribution

This feature has had the impact of eliminating the traditional walk-in appointment system where students are required to submit their contact details to the Guidance and Counseling Unit office, then wait for the counselor to process their application and call them by email or contact. It also eliminates the need to rely on external platforms such as Google Form, Facebook, email and so on to connect the counselors with the students regarding counseling services. Since this site consists of its own chat room that supports text messaging, it provides flexibility for both the students and counselors to opt for any communication method at any time.

In addition, this website is also integrated with a mental health peer support social community where the students can follow each other and post any statuses on the news feed. This feature helps to engage all students on their recovery journey in providing mutual peer support virtually.

Report Organization

Application Review

• Metro Mind: Online Counselling and Therapy App [8]
• Talkspace Counselling & Therapy [10]
• Rapid Application Development (RAD) [11]
• Agile Development [11]

TalkLife is a community platform for mental health support where users seek support and share their thoughts or experiences on the app. Being a social platform, it allows users to follow/add each other and post status by category, as well as be able to comment and reply to the status. This is to perform additional analysis based on previous designed requirements and in order to combine with new features to improve the system from time to time.

This method emphasizes the creation of prototypes, where they are incomplete versions of the software program to allow users to perform evaluation reports by testing them instead of interpreting and evaluating the design based on descriptions. Agile development is a programming-centric method that emphasizes simple and iterative application development that eliminates much of the documentation, modeling, and time spent on the system development process. On the other hand, the Agile method is also appropriate as it performs iterative development so that schedule visibility also gets immediate attention in each phase.

Figure 2.3 TalkLife’s social platform and user profile Strength

Methodology Involved

Project Workflow a) Planning

Proceeding to the analysis phase, as discussed in CHAPTER 2, thorough research will be conducted on existing online counseling applications to gain an insight into their functionalities and user interface respectively. After all the functionalities and methodologies are analyzed and identified, required development tools will be used to come up with the wireframes and application features and logic of each module will be further developed. During the design phase, flowchart, block diagram and UML diagrams such as use case diagrams and activity diagrams will be designed using Visual Paradigm Online and Figma.

This implementation phase will be repeated in each sprint of short cycles to reduce risk during the project execution [15]. The outcome of each sprint will be integrated and tested where the evaluation of the prototype will involve the review of the requirements through data collection and project structure to ensure that the project is developed on the same page as it is initiated. As such, system testing will be performed to thoroughly test the final outcome discussed further in CHAPTER 6.

Block Diagram

• Use Case Diagram a) Student Module

Technologies and Tools Involved .1 Hardware Setup

52 and charts can be saved to cloud storage such as Google Drive and exported in various file formats. Visual Paradigm Online is used to design this project's flow diagram, use case and activity diagrams. Figma is a web-based graphics editor and prototyping tool that is compatible with both macOS and Windows [19].

It focuses on user experience and interface design with an emphasis on real-time collaboration. This means that Figma supports multiple users working on the same design and updates in real time as it is stored in the cloud. Collaborators will be able to design the layout of their app and its components, then link them into modules, allowing customers to navigate from one module to another as a transparent prototype of how the actual app works.

Canva, a graphic design platform that also offers a wide variety of templates and design ideas for different purposes, was used to create the project's system block diagram and poster.

Setting and Configuration

System Testing and Performance Metrics

Testing Setup and Result

Bachelor of Information Systems (Hons) Information Systems Engineering Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (Kampar Campus), UTAR .. successfully Edit profile User can edit. The user can view the list of counselors registered successfully .. meeting successfully . and can. cancel before advisor accepts .. appointment successfully and can cancel earlier. Bachelor of Information Systems (Honours) Information Systems Engineering Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (Kampar Campus), UTAR .. with success . profile successfully Follow user User can . follow other registered users.

Bachelor of Information Systems (Honours) Information System Engineering Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (Kampar Campus), UTAR . 65 2) Click on.

Project Challenges

Objectives Evaluation

Conclusion

Recommendation

Hanley, "Understanding the online therapeutic alliance through the eyes of adolescent service users", Counseling and Psychotherapy Research, 2012, pp.35-43. Wong, et al, "Preferences for online and/or face-to-face counseling among university students in Malaysia", B.S.

FINAL YEAR PROJECT WEEKLY REPORT

• WORK DONE
• WORK TO BE DONE
• PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED
• SELF EVALUATION OF THE PROGRESS
• WORK TO BE DONE Continue development process
• WORK TO BE DONE Integrate all modules
• WORK TO BE DONE Finalize FYP2 report
• WORK TO BE DONE Prepare presentation materials

WORK TO BE PERFORMED Continue the development process Continue the development process Prepare documentation for FYP2 report. Gmail SMTP changed its policy on May 31, which required additional effort to find an alternative solution to establish the connection. Required originality parameters and UTAR approved limits are as follows:. i) Overall Similarity Index is 20% and below, and. ii) Matches from separate sources listed must be less than 3% each, and (iii) Matching texts in continuous block must not exceed 8 words.

Note: Parameters (i) – (ii) exclude citations, bibliography and text matches of less than 8 words. Note The supervisor/candidate(s) must provide the Faculty/Institute with an electronic copy of the complete originality report set. Based on the above results, I declare that I am satisfied with the originality of the final year project report submitted by my students as mentioned above.

Form title: Supervisor's comments on originality report generated by Turnitin for submission of final year project report (for undergraduate programs).

UNIVERSITI TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN