ANDROID WORKSHOP

CSI Student Chapter of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon organized one day workshop on ODK based Android Application Development on 24th October 2016. Forty Six students from Electronics and Communication Department attended the workshop. The session was conducted by Mr. Sudhir Gupta, who has a diverse industrial experience. Mr. Gupta started his career at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and has held senior positions in leading organizations like DCM Data Systems, Uptron, Honeywell and Airtel, Comverse, Drishtee.

The objective of the workshop is to ignite interest among students to take up mobile application development using Android environment.

Details of the Workshop

Open Data Kit (ODK) enables users to capture and instantly digitize information of a variety of formats, eliminating the need for paper questionnaire surveys and data entry. It allows preparing a digitally programmed questionnaire, facilitates intense monitoring of the collection process and gathering of data immediately after survey in a format prepared for analysis. The smartphones and similar devices are equipped to support ODK software.ODK is a set of open source applications which allow one to create a questionnaire form in the Xform format, fill it out on a mobile phone or tablet running the Android operating system, store and view the aggregated information on a central server, and retrieve the aggregated data to one’s computer for analysis. Data capture includes GPS coordinates for real-time mapping of responses in Google Maps, or near-real time once the surveyor has an Internet connection to send the collected forms back to the server. The students were introduced to Survey CTO as a Platform for designing tools, collect data and analyse data. Open Data Kit (ODK) is a free and open-source set of tools which help organizations author, field, and manage mobile data collection solutions. ODK provides an out-of-the-box solution for users to:

1. Build a data collection form or survey (XLS Form is recommended for larger forms);

2. Collect the data on a mobile device and send it to a server; and

3. Aggregate the collected data on a server and extract it in useful formats.

In addition to socio-economic and health surveys with GPS locations and images, ODK is being used to create decision support for clinicians and for building multimedia-rich nature mapping tools. ODK is supported by a growing community of developers, implementers and users as well as various companies. Core ODK development is supported by on-going research at the University of Washington's Department of Computer Science.

The ODK software suite consists of 3 different programs including ODK Form, ODK Collect and ODK Aggregate.

1. First setup our server that is ODK Aggregate in our laptop. Then we search for the "ODK Collect" app from Google Play on the device.

2. We install the latest version to the mobile device.

3. The questionnaires are subsequently saved to the phones SD memory, where it can be accessed without internet connectivity. Questionnaire in ODK Collect is ODK Form which is an xml file.

In the end Course Valediction session took place. The session concluded with vote of thanks by Ms. Dimple Saproo, HOD, ECE Department.

The workshop was very well received by the participants. Whether one was a seasoned mobile apps user or new to mobile apps especially for data collection, the session allowed the students to quickly get a grip on the ODK.

Some Glimpses: