The aim of the WP 5 is the development of a Company-University-Student Cooperation Service – Virtual Innovation Space. VIS is a kind of social network that link together, supports interaction and knowledge transfer between students, universities and companies.
Outcomes of the workpackage are:
WP5.1 – Software development package: Virtual innovation space;
WP5.2 – Support services (technical support, training, coaching users).
LPNU team (6 persons at this moment: Prof. D. Fedasyuk, Prof. P. Zhezhnych, Dr. P. Serdyuk, Dr. V. Yakovyna, Dr. R. Tushnytskyy, and N. Lyshak) is the leading partner of this workpackage.
At the present moment main functional requirements are revealed and discussed by all partners at Coimbra (May 2013), Kharkiv (September 2013), and Oxford (December 2013) meeting. High, medium and low priority user stories are described in details and discussed as well. As a VIS development platform CMS Drupal is chosen.
The main steps of VIS software package development are as follows:
1. Server equipment preparation;
2. System software preparation;
3. Web application platform preparation;
4. VIS development tools installation and setup;
5. User registration module development;
6. Web portal structure design and development;
7. Social network design and development;
8. Start-up project registration system design and development;
9. VIS software documentation writing;
10. Site Web-design;
11. System maintenance and support.
Up to now, we have platform and development tools deployed at LPNU servers. Basic functional requirements of VIS are implemented and alpha version of software is now operating at LPNU facilities and can be reached at http://vis.lp.edu.ua/. Steps 5–8 now are completed in their basic version and further requirement refining and discussion are needed to complete these tasks. Steps 9–10 are at the early stage of development. Step 11 will be conducted constantly (after software release) in order to insure the sustainability of the VIS after the project ends, and this step is the main outcome of WP 5.2.
Since the first version of the portal should be made operational before the student innovation forum takes place, the functional as well as non-functional requirements to VIS software in the frames of the forum and WP4 are being discussed by partners.
In this context, the current timeline looks like shown below:
February 15, 2014 – VIS v. 1.0 requirements from ONPU team;
March 1, 2014 – finalised VIS v. 1.0 requirements;
March 15, 2014 – end of VIS v. 1.0 implementation, starting integration testing phase;
April 1, 2014 – VIS v. 1.0 release.