Project Abstract

League tables have faced extensive criticism due to their substantial influence on student decision-making and the potential for misinterpretation as with an increasing number of league tables available online, there is confusion and uncertainty among students regarding which university rankings to trust as they often lack awareness of the underlying criteria. This project focuses on the design and development of a web application featuring a cross-referenced database and a user-friendly user interface that will assist students with their university choices by integrating different methodologies from existing league tables into a single table to produce the most tailored results based on the user preferences. Laravel was chosen as the development framework for this project due to its ability to streamline the development process by providing clean and reusable code. Through the user-interface, users can submit queries to filter data based on their priorities and preferences, with web application then generating results accordingly. The primary methodology employed is the most and least preferred metric approach, where key metrics influence the overall score and thus the rankings of institutions in the database. The algorithm adjusts weightings based on user selections of most and least preferred metrics. The main findings of the project indicate that despite the abundance of available league tables, they have significantly influenced the higher education landscape by helping to bridge the gap between lower and higher-ranked universities. Introducing a web application that consolidates multiple methodologies into one will likely have an even greater impact, particularly in assisting students to make more informed academic decisions.

Keywords: League Tables, University Rankings, Web application

 Conference Details

Session: Poster Session A at Poster Stand 32

Location: Sir Stanley Clarke Auditorium at Tuesday 7th 13:30 – 17:00

Markers: Casey Hopkins, Gary Tam

Course: BSc Computer Science, 3rd Year

Future Plans: I’m continuing studies