Academic Instant Messaging Engine (AIME): Using technology to facilitate students' interaction

During the past few years, we have noticed that students, in general, and freshmen, in specific, feel overwhelmed with their new environment; thus, they find it hard to communicate and support each other in the ways they did in high school. This lack of communication will most likely result in a bad experience on both social and academic levels. In this paper, we propose a secure implementation called Academic Instant Messaging Engine (AIME) to be used by students. We believe such a system would help to achieve better communication between students and allow them to share their knowledge and experiences. We also believe that our application can help students to form study groups and academic clubs. In this paper, we will describe our proposed application and the need for it. Furthermore, we will point out the security aspects of our application and how it maintains the students' privacy.