FICS Student Papers
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Research outputs by graduate students and selected Capstone Project Reports by undergraduate students of the Faculty of Information and Communication Studies.
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ItemA Home for Psychotic Depression: Building a Personal Knowledge Base for Meaning-making in Obsidian( 2025-10-24)This project outlines the creation of a multimedia prototype for an interactive digital environment that supports meaning-making, particularly in the context of psychotic depression, where meaning-making is severely compromised. The prototype comes in the form of a personal knowledge base (PKB) that captures and explores situational meanings and facilitates assisted meaning-making. The PKB was produced through techniques adapted from personal knowledge management — such as Johnny.Decimal, the Slip-box Method, and Maps of Content — and insights formed from my lived experience with psychotic depression, including a private dataset containing my firsthand account of the condition and other personal information. The methodology employed for the project is an iterative design approach that employs Obsidian third-party plugins, CSS, JavaScript, and Python to extend the functionality of the default Obsidian vault into a PKB optimized for meaning-making. Each iteration was documented using a changelog with semantic versioning. The methodology is rooted in the proposed Multimedia Meaning-making Model for Psychotic Depression (M4PD), a novel integrative framework derived from Hyper-meaning (van Os, 2014), Kegan’s Theory of Meaning-making (Kegan et al., 1982; Kegan, 1994), and the Meaning Making Model (Park, 2022). The project spanned an estimated 1 year, with the latest version of the PKB at Version 2.2.0. The PKB has multiple features that collectively enable the streamlined capture and exploration of situational meanings — which are excessive in states of psychosis — and facilitate assisted meaning-making, which addresses the disruptions to global meaning caused by depression. It is to be noted that the PKB successfully produced a topological network of over 12,000 nodes, comprised of entries about psychotic depression and my personal life from 2018 to 2025, suggesting an emergent yet unrefined map of my meaning-making. The results presented in this project are part of an ongoing, larger effort to develop an interactive digital environment for supporting meaning-making. The project concludes with a call for a future product, unique enough to warrant its own designation — the Personal Meaning Base or PMB.
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ItemDesign and Development of the UPLB Vehicle Sticker Management System( 2024-05-10)The University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) aims to revamp its Vehicle Sticker Application system through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Community Affairs and the Security and Safety Office. The existing online platform, developed hastily during the pandemic, has proven inefficient and user-unfriendly, leading to user dissatisfaction. Operating on outdated technology (CodeIgniter v3), the system faces security and functionality issues. This project proposes a redesign and technology update to enhance the application process, making it accessible, efficient, and secure. The new system will streamline the registration, payment, and appointment processes by transitioning to a modern technology stack, such as Laravel and FilamentPHP. It aims to provide a user-friendly interface, real-time tracking, and improved management functionalities. This initiative addresses current system inadequacies and aligns with UPLB's commitment to campus security and efficient traffic management.
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ItemHAC Global Support Cost System( 2022)The project streamlines the Humanitarian Action for Children (HAC) global support cost process using an information system. The information system includes features for collecting data, managing permissions, computing and reporting the global support cost, and user guides. It also uses predictive analysis to estimate the future cost. The system was developed for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), a non-profit organization that works in over 190 countries and territories in the areas of child protection, education, health, nutrition, and other programmes for children. The HAC appeal is an annual campaign for fundraising to support UNICEF’s work, including global support. The project also demonstrates the value proposition of a low-code solution approach. Microsoft SharePoint and Power Platform (i.e., Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate) were used to develop the information system.
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ItemSining Para Sa Pagbabago: Examining How Sharing Protest Art Online Shapes The Attitudes and Actions of Young Filipinos Towards Socio-Political Advocacy Groups(Zenodo, 2025-09-10)With the Internet’s unrelenting presence in people’s lives today, the distribution, reach, and accessibility of protest art has been changed irrevocably. In the evolving landscape of protest art and its audiences, this study endeavored to identify and discuss the societal implications of sharing digital protest artworks in online spaces, examining how they shape the attitudes and actions of young Filipino audiences towards socio-political advocacy groups. Through semi-structured, open-ended interviews and surveys with organization representatives, local artists, and audiences, the data used in this research were analyzed using the Grounded Theory approach by Glaser and Strauss. This research study culminated in a paradigm entitled “Effect Beyond The Screen” that explains the starting grounded theory, “The ‘Societal Implications of Sharing Digital Protest Art’ is dependent on the consideration of ‘Audience-Influencing Factors’ in the production of the artworks that serve as the ‘Means of Introduction’ which consequently restarts the process.” Even with the overarching positive sentiment on the efficacy of sharing digital protest art in shaping Filipino audiences’ attitudes and actions towards socio-political advocacy groups, this study found that while digital protest art is a valuable tool, it is most effective when integrated into a broader framework that emphasizes subsequent calls to action and offline engagement beyond digital activism. Awareness, engagement, and participation in digital protest artworks do not necessarily equate to actual, productive community engagement and collective action, as the outcome still relies heavily on the individual’s decisions.
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ItemBLOCKCHAIN-BASED DIPLOMA VERIFICATION SYSTEM FOR HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES( 2025-09-17)Diploma forgery is a perennial problem in the Philippines. It invalidated the time, effort, and abilities required to obtain a degree in both the higher education system and the workplace. In recent years, there have been multiple instances of academic credential fabrication. One of them was of a high-ranking Department of Foreign Affairs official who fabricated her academic credentials and worked for the government as an Assistant Secretary, a position that needed not only a bachelor's degree but also extensive experience and academic achievements. In this project, the proponent created a tamper-proof, efficient, and publicly available blockchain-based diploma verification system to expedite diploma verification for any higher educational institution in the Philippines. The platform did not require corporations, entities, or any other public entity to create and manage a blockchain wallet in order to access and verify diplomas minted on the blockchain network. To assess the project's success, a platform prototype was created and tested by (10) volunteers. Following the use of the system, a survey on the efficiency of the prototype in authenticating diplomas over the internet was supplied. Overall, the project aimed to demonstrate the dependability and effectiveness of using blockchain technology to authenticate academic credentials such as diplomas in order to prevent document fraud and forgery.