MSc and UG Project Ideas

Chris Greenhalgh, 2012-01-13

I am very interested in the idea of Appropriate ICT (van Reijswoud, 2009), i.e. ICT that fits well in particular contexts or settings, especially in the two-thirds world. Most of my current work is in mobile and ubiquitous computing (including mobile games and cultural experiences). I have also been involved in developing extensions for Moodle, the University's new VLE.

Here are some project ideas; I'm happy to discuss your own proposals:

Mobile Application for Development

Propose, prototype and evaluate a new application or service that makes use of a mobile phone as the client device (either simple voice-and-SMS handsets or smart-phone). The application or service should address a specifically identified need, want or opportunity in a developing or newly industrialised country, and the evaluation should include consideration of diverse constraints in the target setting as well as (for example) technical performance and/or usability.

Opportunities for m-health in rural Uganda

The goal of this project is to propose and evaluate potential uses of mobile phones to support work in and around the Ngora Hospital, a private not-for-profit hospital, and the attached District Maternity Unit in the Ngora District of the Teso area of North East Uganda. This is likely to involve prototyping and evaluating one or more specific approaches, and might be based on a range of possible mobile device capabilities, from voice only, through SMS to smart phones and mobile internet. As the project is likely to be done from the UK familiarity with the country and ideally the region would be very helpful. This project is inspired by the collaboration between the Ngora Hospital and the Teso Development Trust, a UK charity working with partners in the Teso area of North East Uganda.

A Mobile Phone-based System for Distributed Coordination

In many developing countries there is relatively widespread access to mobile phones supporting SMS and voice, but little other access to computers outside large cities. The goal of this project is design and prototype a system which allows a geographically distributed group or groups to coordinate some common activity where most if not all interaction with the system is via voice or SMS. The exact activity and form(s) of coordination can be decided within the scope of the project, e.g. coordinating agriculture or rural production, local health provision, education, government. This idea is inspired by the Scaling the Rural Enterprise project.

Extending the Ushahidi Crowd-sourcing Platform

Extend the Ushahidi crowd-sourcing platform to support one or more of (a) crowd-sourcing of one or more new form of data (b) new representations of crowd-sourced data (c) new methods or algorithms for checking and validating crowd-sourced data (d) new methods of deriving new information from crowd-sourced data. Document and evaluate your extensions in a particular scenario. Ushahidi (http://ushahidi.com/) is an open source crowd-sourcing platform that allows the public to contribute reports of "events" to a web site for others to view and/or respond to. For example, it was first developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the 2008 election.

A Toolkit for Multi-user Mobile/Ubicomp Experiences

Design, prototype and evaluate a toolkit (e.g. library and standard service(s)) that supports the development of specifically multi-user and distributed mobile/ubicomp experiences. Ideally the toolkit should be usable with a range of mobile application development platforms and technologies, and should prioritise support for multi-user functions such as discovery, session management, state distribution, distributed consistency, awareness, links to social networks, and so on. 

A Ubicomp Prototyping Tool

Design, prototype and evaluate a tool for prototyping ubicomp applications and services (i.e. mobile and sensor-based). The tool should be targetted at a particular user audience and application domain(s).

Sensor Integration in Ubicomp Applications

Design, prototype and evaluate a system that allows Ubicomp applications to make use of local sensors, e.g. environmental sensors, tag readers or video trackers in the immediate vicinity of a mobile user.

A Light-weight Cloud-hosting Platform

Design, prototype and evaluate a system for hosting and managing small and low-demand web applications on a cloud computing platform (such as Amazon EC2). The key requirements are: to allow a single cloud-hosted virtual server to be shared by varying numbers of applications (to reduce costs); to maintain a reasonable degree of isolation between applications; to support application management including load limits and diagnostics; to support application development on the desktop with easy migration to the cloud. This could be based on an existing virtualisation or para-virtualisation technology such as OpenVZ.   

A Moodle Assignment Module for the School of Computer Science

Design, develop and evaluate a new assigment module for Moodle, specifically to support the needs of the School of Computer Science. It has been proposed that the University of Nottingham adopt Moodle (http://moodle.org) as its supported Virtual Learning Environment. Previous analysis of the School's requirements for coursework submission and feedback have identified a number of features that existing assignment modules do not support, necessitating the development of this module. For example, bulk printing of submissions in the School office, automated testing of submissions (e.g. in the case of computer programs), bulk export/import of submissions and feedback, coordinated monitoring of coursework submissions and feedback from within the School, and support for second marking and moderation of group and individual projects.   

A Personal Learning Dashboard for Moodle

The aim of this project is to design, prototype and evaluate a “personal learning dashboard” for Moodle. Moodle (http://moodle.org) is a Virtual Learning Environment which the University if adopting to replace WebCT. A personal learning dashboard is an integrated display of a student’s learning-related activities (past, present and future), which can help them to monitor and manage their on-going learning. Learning-related activities might include: lectures and labs, exercises, assignments and coursework, reading, revision, conversations and discussions (online and offline), reflection and feedback, and so on. (This is the same brief as my 2011/12 second year UG group project, but there are many approaches that can be taken to this and many possible extensions and developments.)