Challenge Academy

Platform | App’s Notebook

Linkyou Project Framework

Linkyou is a project co-financed by European Commission through the Erasmus Plus project. The main

objective of Link You is to improve the employability of young graduates in Latin America through a web-

based application strategy inspired by the crowdsourcing platforms as a tool to:

a) Create a network that seeks to bring together organizations, teachers/ researchers and students, b)

allow the exchange of knowledge between academia and companies,

b) Attract funds Private partnerships for research, which will in turn promote a better level of innovation

and enterprising entrepreneurial spirit.

Linkyou Project persecutes three main activities:

1. European Crowdsourcing Benchmarking

2. Teachers Training to improve the incorporation of employability skills into the curricula

3. Challenge Academy Platform | APP

4. Knowledge transfer Office best practices

Challenge Academy Platform | APP

The aim of this platform is to create an opportunity of professionals (people working in others

organization or owners of their company) to connect with teachers and researchers and indirectly with

students. Students’ employability is increased by their experiences with the market and this could be done

through internships, volunteering or other extracurricular activities. On way to increase this kind of

experiences is to involve their teacher’s in connection activities with the job market. This tool aims to

promote the connection of teachers with professionals in order to foster the teaching and learning closer

to the needs of the world of work.

It is intended to get the teachers using the examples from international organizations in their classes

through three main options:

1. Master dissertations themes about organizations challenges;

2. Case-studies provided by the professionals;

3. Working groups to solve small challenges from organizations.

Professionals on other hand could use the platform as a tool of employer branding inside the universities

through the cooperation with classes by providing:

1) Case studies,

2) Small challenges to be solve by a working group (one or two classes),

3) The biggest challenge is to develop a master dissertation in partnership with a student and academic

supervisor.

All professionals are allowed to present ideas for the three options and once they choose the main

research area, teachers will be notified and they can be contacted by various higher education institution.

Users and Main Features

There are several user types at the platform, each one with its own permissions, tasks and functionalities.

Their specific details are as follows:

Employee/ Entrepreneur

Launch challenges

Receive notifications with proposals from teacher’s

Contact teachers

Create groups of interests

Student

Search teachers per area

Receive notifications with proposals from teacher’s

Contact teachers

Suggest thesis dissertation subject’s

Teacher

Launch proposals for students

Organize teaching activities by using the Challenge Academy as pedagogical tool

Receive notifications from business’

Contact students and business’

Administrator

Send messages for users

Approve new degrees/ courses/ universities

Delete users

Change the profile type

Common features for all user types

Search and contact other users

Search documents

Search Feed Notifications

Main Area x x

Research Line x x x

Tags x x

(And)

Country x x x

Course x x

Proposals Type x x x

Example about how to use the platform

I am a professional working on the recruitment and selection from an IT company department and I am

facing some problems to attract new talented graduates. I registered at the platform and I launch the

following challenge:

Title: Attraction new talented graduates

What is the problem to solve or the question that you want to be answered by this research project?

I am working in IT company with 35 employees. I want to attract informatics to my recruitment process’

but I am not receiving applications. The company is a national one and work mainly for the banking and

insurance sector. We use the LinkedIn to attract people. We want to run an academy in the next month

and we would to attract 20 applications. How do you think that we can manage that?

Are you going to offer a scholarship? If yes, how much it will be? No.

Is the student going to work at the company/institution during the period of the thesis

accomplishment? No

Is the student going to have access to confidential data? No

Challenges Objectives: Lecture/ Working group

Research Lines: Human resources

Country: English

All teachers with Human Resources in their research lines will be notified about that and could send a

message to the professional asking for additional information or informing that will have a lecture about

this theme and that students will be invited to make an assignment in small groups about the challenge.

They will send the results in two weeks to the professional.

I. Process Workflow

User account creation:

Challenge creation, edition, publication and status change to “closed”:

Dissertation creation, edition, publication and students’ notification and interest:

II. App Layout

The design is simple and easy-to-use, focused mainly on the user experience.

In this section, we find a few screenshots of the design presented in some pages of the application. Since

the app was developed to be compatible with multiple types of device, the images that follow represent

multiple screen sizes:

Phone:

Tablet/Computer:

III. Data Model

In the following diagram, we present the data model of Challenge Academy Database. We adopt the conventional mapping from UML Class Diagram to

Relational Databases.

IV. Technology Choices

For the development of this platform, free, open source solutions with a large community were chosen.

Server technologies:

MySQL – Open-source relational database management system.

php - Server-side scripting language designed for Web development.

Centrifugo - Real-time messaging server.

Client technologies:

React JS - JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Allows for modular code.

To ensure the best user experience, the new app communicates with the server in a restful way. The

layouts are loaded only once, when the app starts, so when the user performs an action, it will get instant

feedback (while the app waits for the server response, only the placeholders will be shown).

The real-time messaging server is used for the chat and for the features that require events triggered by

the server.

V. Software Arquitecture

The platform was designed in such a way that maintaining and developing code would be simple and

incredibly effective. Adding a field to a document would be as simple as adding two or three lines in a

configuration file, instead of having to modify several lines of code in multiple files.

By combining the versatility of human-readable configuration files and simple, generic code, the entire

system can be easily upgraded with new functionalities, languages and even visual layouts.

Configuration sample of the dissertation list fields

"list": {

"_struct": {

"_fields": [

{

"_component_type": "DocumentListItem",

"_fields": [

"document.id",

"document.title",

"document_type.designation",

"document.description",

"document.published",

"document.closed",

"document.creation_date",

"document.updated_date",

"user.name",

"user.surname",

"user.image",

"organization.name"

]

}

]

}

}

Configuration sample of search with multiple fields

{

"_views": {

"institution": {

"_struct": {

"_fields": [

"organization.id",

"organization.name"

]

}

},

"course": {

"_struct": {

"_fields": [

"course.name",

"course.id",

"organization.name",

"organization_type.designation"

]

}

},

"researchline": {

"_struct": {

"_fields": [

"tag.designation",

"tag.id",

"tag_type.designation",

"tag_type.needs_approval"

]

}

}

}

}

Configuration of the fields used for the login process

"login": {

"_struct": {

"_fields": [

"user.email",

"user.password",

"user.id",

"user_type.designation",

"access_level.designation"

]

}

}

This project has been funded with support from the

European Commission. This document reflects the

views only of the author, and the Commission cannot

be held responsible for any use which may be made

of the information contained therein.

Contact Marina Ventura, Coordinator. Career Services and Alumni office. Instituto Universitario de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) T: +351 21 790 3000 marina.ventura@iscte.pt Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal.