SAWBRID: SmArt WhiteBoard Replacement Interactive Device

Abstract

The idea of attending a professor’s office hours seems very basic to the average college student. The beginning of each semester brings about a wave of invitations to visit each professor in their office, at the allotted time for the section of their class. Recent developments such as the growing prevalence of texting and email, as well as specific events such as the Covid-19 pandemic have brought the norm away from these in person meetings between students and professors, to the detriment of the students’ education. The SmArt WhiteBoard Replacement Interactive Device (SAWBRID) is an innovative solution composed of an interactive device with a Low-power screen that, through a user friendly mobile application, makes the facilitation of office hours and the student/professor interactions outside of the classroom far more flexible and simple. In whole, the project is centered around the individual professor, their schedule, and how that schedule is communicated. The SAWBRID sits in an accessible casing outside of the professor’s office, relaying information about their schedule, available time slots to be scheduled through the mobile application, and personalized messages. The device is self-updating whenever a change is detected in the professor’s schedule, or when they decide to update their personalized message. The student can access a professor’s schedule through the mobile application and schedule an appointment, which will place their initials in the selected time slot on both the mobile application and the SAWBRID. The professor has a different interface to interact with their SAWBRID from the mobile application giving them more control over their schedule, the personalized messages they want to display and other features. We use security services such as confidentiality and authentication throughout the system to protect user credentials, user data, and to ensure the privacy of the users. Our solution effectiveness and performance are evaluated through power measurements to determine the device’s ability to self-sustain for long periods of time and the ease of use.