DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MOBILE APPLICATION RESULT CHECKER

1.1 Introduction

Mobile Application Result Checker is a system that checks students’ academic result or assignments score. The aim of computer programming is to put these data files and documents in an interactive manner in a computer system. This will enhance valuable handling and processing of data, leading to improved management decision making. MARC (Mobile Application Result Checker) result checking system not only enables students to request for their grades, the system can also deliver the grades to their phones as soon as the grades become available. The system enforces security with the use of secret information (password), and also provides access to new and old grades.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

1.2 Background of Study

Computers with the power of the internet have thrived in aiding communication among people. The telephone system, which is the main communication system that was invented several years ago, had undergone a great improvement, so much that today we have fixed wireless phones, mobile phones and the likes. With the rapid development of mobile phones come several services like the Short Messaging Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and others, which are readily available and add to the usefulness of mobile phones. SMS in particular is widely used in communication, and more recently has been leveraged to provide several services like airline ticketing, banking services, commercial services like share and sell (an added service provided by MTN Nigeria), where subscribers can easily share and/or sell airtime, and several others. SMS is a mobile technology that allows for sending and receiving text or even binary messages to and from a mobile phone. The relative ease of use of SMS makes it possible for a user to learn how to send SMS easily.

Schofield and Kubin (2002) argued that small devices could potentially provide better interface for finding information than through page browsing and other means. More than 160 billion SMS are exchanged each month in European countries (Mavrakis, 2004), and according to Resource Shelf (2006), 48.7 billion SMS messages were sent in the second half of 2005, which is up 50% on the six months before that. Nowadays, with 45 million short messages sent in Africa alone every day, a mobile phone that has the easiest interface for voice communication is likely to fail the user satisfaction test if it does not provide a reasonably good SMS interface (Gorienko & Merrick, 2003).

The major advantage of SMS is its cost effectiveness, and availability, as most individuals own phone. In different parts of the world, several service providers offer mobile services which include SMS. Most times the cost attached to sending a SMS is relatively small, and most providers do not charge when receiving SMS. Sometimes, service providers give users certain amount of free SMS per month, which allows customers send and receive unlimited number of SMS messages. It is possible to acquire a special dedicated line that uses a custom rate for messages sent to the number; it is also possible to have a number as toll free, making it free for users to send SMS to the number. All these contribute to what makes SMS a really cost effective means of disseminating information.

1.3 Statement of Problem

Till today, especially in the developing countries, there still exists the problem of checking examination results as students still throng notice boards in anxiety. Although most universities, even those in the less developed countries now make examination results available on their websites. The level of internet availability in less developed countries is still low and quite expensive. Even in the developed countries where most homes have internet access, SMS is still a faster and cheaper means of dissemination examination results as well as other information. Pramsane and Sanjaya (2006) stated that universities can provide educational services based on SMS such as grade release, enrolment information, university announcement and internship opportunity. An advantage SMS offers is that students can receive valuable information on the fly without requesting for it.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the study

The aim of the study is to design and implement a mobile application system for checking academic results. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To develop a Mobile Result Checker Application that will receive SMS from all kind of phones from all networks.
2. The application will be able to notify users when they make an invalid request.
3. The application should be able to provide security using password.
4. The application will be relatively easy to customize.

1.5 Significance of Study

The significance of this study includes the following:

1. Convenience: Users get their results at their own convenience.
2. Accessibility: Users can access their results from any location (as long asthey are within a network service reception area).
3. Portability: Results can be received and checked from any GSM phone. All GSM phones support SMS.
4. Saves time: SMS is on the fly. It reduces the throughput of result checking as websites are sometimes unavailable due to congestion, or server down time. SMS provides a faster means of sending and receiving such information.
5. Cheaper: SMS is generally economical, and it sometimes provided as a free service (at least for certain periods) by the service provider. Most providers also do not charge when users receive SMS: Less human resources required: Results are processed automatically
6. Mobility: It is obvious that most mobile phone users have their phones with them everywhere they go, most people often leave their computer as home, or work sometimes, but they will always have their phone on them.

This study will also be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.

1.6 Scope of the Study

The study focuses on the design and implementation of a mobile application result checker system. For the purpose of this research work, the researcher shall be limited to developing a mobile application result checker that will be an Independent Service; this involves using solely a mobile phone and the application server (the system running the SMS application). This option offers limited benefit, but it is easy and fast to setup. It does not require authorization of the service provider or connection to any third party SMS provider. The mobile phone uses a regular SIM card which has a normal phone number, and messages that originate from the phone attracts the standard cost or tariff.

1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials.

1.8 Definition Of Terms

1. Beta testing: Testing carried out on software independent of its manufacturer by external users
2. Internet application: A Web site with dynamic, i.e. data-source oriented user-specific, content, which usually requires some form of user authentication.
3. Software: These are set of logically related instructions given to the computer to perform some specific tasks.
4. Mobile device: Any device with the functionality for information management and transfer free from spatial and temporal constraints. Such devices include mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), tablets and readers, among others.
5. Mobile Web: The Internet, as accessible to mobile devices and computer system
6. RAD: Rapid application development, a style of programming in which emphasis is placed on speed and delivery, usually employing extensive use of IDE (integrated development environment) capability.
7. UML: Unified Modeling Language, the international standard for specifying, visualizing, constructing and documenting the artifacts of software systems.
8. User authentication: The process within the context of an Internet application wherein eligible users are granted clearance to enter − and use − the application;
9. User state: The full set of all user-specific program data within a program or Internet application.
10. Online result system: It is web based software that can process course registration and output results to the user.