DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE RESULT PROCESSING AND CHECKING PORTAL

1.1 Introduction

Result Processing and Checking Portal are vital recurrent procedures and processes in every university system that is inevitable. It is the university's tradition to carry out these processes every first semester of every session, where each student is to know he/her performance in each of the course offered. These important processes provide the vital performance of student's in each level in the university system. Online 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. ORC (Online 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.

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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.

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1.3 Statement of Problem

The major problems regarding the delivery of examination information services in Nigerian universities include:

1. Delays in the release of results;
2. Errors inherent in handling and assessment of answer scripts;
3. Delays in marking answer scripts; and
4. Cumbersome response systems − where they exist − for handling result-related complaints.
5. Most students do not remember what they have in previous courses because the manual result checker processes do not allow you to have a copy of your result.
6. The manual system of result computing is only capable to attend to a limited number of result submitted by course lecturer.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of the study

The aim of the study is to design and implement an Online Result Processing and Checking Portal Application Software for checking academic results. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:

1. Provide an objective system for recording aggregating and computing students' result.
2. Enhance or improve the computer literacy of every FUTO student.
3. Reduce crowd and queuing of student result checker.
4. Reduce the possibility of making error or mistakes during the result grading and computing.
5. Reduce misplacement of student complains letter of result by the examiner.
6. Provide a room to enter student's result before senate meeting and after senate meeting.
7. Reduce students population in examiner office after the release of result for complains rather student will send message/comment to examiner on he/her result through this Result Processing and Checking Portal.

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1.5 Significance of Study

The Result Processing and Checking Portal portal is an information management system, which employ database technology to process and manage students' result, this is actually achieved by the actual collection of grade and computing student result through the user interface of a software, storing the grades in the database, collecting students' scores from course lecturers, and computing those results in a way that determines the grade, course point and CGPA of every student. These procedures help in decision making, because the output of the result computation determine each student's result and performance, hence the academic grades of each student is obtained.

The benefits of database software like the RCAORCS cannot be overemphasized, as it is evident that any successful organization in the world today also enjoys the benefits of database technology.

Database software like the RCAORCS are designed to save user information, facilitate the manipulation of data in a faster rate, provide concurrent access to authorized users, and also ensure the integrity and accuracy of the information stored by the authorized users. The Result Processing and Checking Portal software has been designed to manage two accounts; The Student Account, The Admin Account. Each of these accounts have been granted with privileges to ensure that the necessary information are collected and managed in a way that guarantees the integrity of the data stored in the application. Password restrictions have been embedded in the software to deny access to unauthorized users who may intentionally or unintentionally try to illegally access information and manipulate it to their interest.

This project work has carefully combined the important features of database services required to successfully replace the existing manual course registration process with an automated or computerized system.

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1.6 Scope of the Study

The Result Processing and Checking Portal software will be design to manage the result computing of only Mathematics and Computer Science Department Students from 100 level to 400 level of Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO).

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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.

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1.8 Definition Of Terms

Result Computing: This is the process of computing each student's result in a course by each course lecturer to determine every student's performance in their course. A student's result consists the individual courses results of the courses registered by the student.

Computer: Computer is an electronic device that accepts, processes, stores and outputs data at high speeds according to programmed instructions.

Internet: Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve several billion of users worldwide.

Software: The term software refers to a computer program or application installed in a computer, used to perform some specific task(s). The uses of applications or software to perform tasks make work easy, save time, and reduce the possibility of making mistakes or errors.

Beta testing: Testing carried out on software independent of its manufacturer by external users

Internet application: A Web site with dynamic, i.e. data-source oriented user-specific, content, which usually requires some form of user authentication.