The pilot version of the “Weekly Tracking Tool”, developed by teams of students from Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, is available for testing by the student community. The platform allows users to organise academic information, including registration in curricular units, scheduling of exams, management of events and projects, organisation of tasks and deadlines, as well as tracking both planned and completed study hours. This pilot phase is open to student participation, allowing users to submit feedback to improve the tool.
Bernardo Sousa, a final-year master’s student in Computer Science and Engineering, and Francisco Heleno, a first-year student in the same course, are two of the volunteers on the latest team responsible for developing the web app, as part of a project in collaboration with the Introduction to Information Systems and Computer Engineering curricular unit.
“What we did was take an unfinished project [started in 2018] that had the visual design, and add the necessary data, information, and features for the tool to function effectively”, explains Bernardo Sousa. “There is no other tool of this kind,” he notes. Still, he emphasises that “the first thing” to do will be to listen to the students after they use the tool, since “it is the responsibility of the team to improve whatever is necessary.”
For Francisco Heleno, the tool will be particularly useful “for first-year students”, allowing them to “visualise their study progress and the time they should dedicate to it”. Bernardo Sousa believes that it will not only benefit students by making studying “much more methodical”, but it could also be integrated into a system that allows tutors to track students’ results. “I think it’s crucial to bridge the gap between tutors and students, because it’s hard to reach students without data, and this tool will help with that”, he explained.
Gonçalo Moura, coordinator of the Academic Development Office (NDA) at Técnico, has been monitoring the tool’s development and explains that it is now used “regularly” in the follow-ups conducted by the office. The “major improvement” lies in its connectivity with the Fenix academic management platform, allowing for the immediate import of a dataset, in addition to being “visually more appealing and intuitive”. Gonçalo Moura highlights the volunteer work of the students who contributed to the tool’s development, stating that it’s “important” to show students that they can engage in volunteer work for the community through project development.
