DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ONLINE ADMISSION AND RESULT CHECKING SYSTEM

By

Author

Presented To

Department of Computer Science

CHAPTER ONE

1.0     INTRODUCTION

          Today all the work at the time of admission of the students is done manually by ink and paper, which is very slow and consuming much efforts and time. It is required to Design of a Computerized Automated Student Admission System, to speed up and make it easy to use system. Student admissions are a vital part of any university’s running because students are what keep a University alive. The student admission is one of the most important activities within a university as one cannot survive without students. A poor admissions system can mean fewer students being admitted into a university because of mistakes or an overly slow response time. The process begins with a potential student completing an application form through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, the first step for students is to apply directly to the university through a custom online form. This project’s aim is to automate the system, pre- checking the inclusion of all required material and automatically ranking each student’s application based on a number of criteria. These criteria include the ranking of their university, their grade at said university and their language grade Certificate. The data used by the system is stored in a database that will be the center of all information held about students and the base for the remainder of the process after the initial application has been made. This enables things to be simplified and considerably quickened, making the jobs of the people involved easier. It supports the current process but centralizes it and makes it possible for decisions to be made earlier and easier way.

In this age, the way of doing most things are more or less contemporal to automation compare with some of the ages which human race had passed through since the existing of human being on earth.  Some of this ages includes: stone age, manual age, mechanical age and the now existing automation age which is the use of computer and other automation relation devices to quicking or make jobs easier than before. As it concern this project, the type of job involved is to make information decemination and data collection easy, last any place and at any time.

For the system of admission and result checking system in a high institution, it had been stress on both the students looking for admission, students checking their results and the admission personnel’s of high institution, as a result of the manual way of handling admission and result checking. As a result of the automation age in which we are now, it will be of beneficial to the high institutions in Nigeria by reducing fraud risk, stress etc which involve in the process of admission and result checking, if there will be online system of doing the above mentioned things.

Before the above system can be in existence, there will a good study and understanding of the existing system and requirement for the new system to be in existence. Since it involves online, there must be a need for computers and other online information management tools such as internet facilities etc.

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The background of the study is Covenant polytechnic Abia.  Here is the brief history about the Institute from the school official website.

In a bold attempt to fully top the potentials of the private sector in the areas of education, the Education (National Minimum Standards and Establishment of institutions) Decree of 1985 was amended in 1993 January as follows:

An Institute of the Federation or of a state of by a local government or by any of the following, that is:

    a.    By company incorporated in Nigeria or

    b.    By an individual who satisfy the criteria set in the schedule to this Act for establishment of institutions.

Following this Decree, the guidelines for the establishment of Private Polytechnics, monotechnics and other similar tertiary institutions was drafted as a guide for all prospective proprietors of private polytechnics and colleges of technologies, with the National Board for Technical Education (N.B.T.E) As the statutory body set up by the Federal Government to manage and control all matters relating to polytechnics.

With this deliberate policy of government, Covenant Polytechnic was established as an answer to the cry of thousands of Benue indigenes who were either being eliminated out of other schools or could not gain admission into the only one existing polytechnic in the state and elsewhere. Thus, the Very Revd. Fr. Dr. Chris Utov came into the initiative to establish Covenant Polytechnic inorder to complement government’s effort in the education sector through private participation.

The Polytechnic accordingly complied with all statutory rules for the establishment of a private tertiary institution and obtained official consent and approval to operate in September 1996 from the state ministry of Education, Abia, Abia State.

However, Covenant has not been established as a "comparative pride" or as an "opposition academy" to any other in Benue State or elsewhere, but as a child of academic necessity and in answer to as well as in fulfillment of several contending and prevailing circumstances.

The aim of the institute as set out in the law establishing it include

1. To organize, improve and develop courses of science and training various categories of students.
2. To promote research and advancements of science and leasing .
3. To serve as a center for educational research especially as applied to local conditions.
4. To organize, improve and extend education of standard higher than secondary school level.
5. To encourage all closes and communities without any distinction to pursue liberal course of education.

1. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

In recent times, there had been problems of admission processes which ranges from proud on the part of the admission personnel in which they engage in admitting their relations or whoever that gives them a huge amount of money to the stress encounter by the admitting personnel and the admission sicking candidate. Another problem is the expenditure involved both on the part of the candidate and the high institution in question a case study, COVENANT POLY Enugu. Also the use of take result to going admission is another problem faced by the existing system.

The already admitted students on their own part, encounters a lot of stress while checking their result and the institution also encounter a lot of problem in processing, printing and pasting of result. The problem includes the stress, resources wastage i.e human, materials and financial aspects.

Sometimes, as a result of typographical error, inadequate printing impression, tearing of pasted result by first students who first checked their result, leads to making some students not see their result in time which will make them to start going to the HOD for help. All these mentioned above and more are problems faced by the existing system.

Also, the difficulties student and staff of admission department usually force in any institution of higher learning made us to realize that (computer aid) an online admission system is the best that can happen to Covenant polytechnic Abia.  This will save our school the embarrassment caused by students’ complaints at the end of the working day.

It was in the view of this that Sundison (1994) pointed out that "a typical problem students have had was moving from school to another school.  In a modern society labour moves quite a bit and many students change schools at least once in their lifetime.  Every time new students were offered admission into a school, there was a problem of which curriculum the previous school had followed and therefore whether the previous level tallied with those of the new school".

Many students neither know their right nor left at the admission level in the institution.  Admission had frustrated so many students that some even roles a lot of lectures in pursuit of registration.  

1.3     PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

          When we talk about online system of admission, we should be referring to the use of internet in processing admission i.e were a student or candidate has to go to internet, log into Covenant PolyWeb site, put in the required data which includes the qualification, data of birth locality and nationality etc and getting back the necessary information automatically either at that time or later.

On the other hand, result checking also involves the same procedure but has to do with the students putting in their registration and other students identification data and then get their result either immediately or get it sent to their e-mail box automatically.

1. AIM AND OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

          The original purpose of this study is to design and implement an online students admission system in Covenant polytechnic Abia.  Its purpose are to have the following:

1. Efficient and safe storage
2. Minimization of stress and resources involved in admitting students into COVENANT POLY.
3. Minimizing stress and resources involved in result checking.
4. Making available results to student’s any place and any time.
5. Making other school information available to those whom it concern.
6. Quick retrieval of records and information
7. Proper accounting and file keeping
8. Quick response to any adhoc enquires
9. Assist in result recording
10. Assist in CCPA updating

1. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

It is hoped that the result of this study will serve as tools for helping students who wish to register for their NCE programmes, and will go a long way helping the staff also.  This is easy to achieve since standard and tested computer programs handle all sort of complex calculations, storage and retrieval of valuable information needed fro the school.

Also, important is the fact that records prepared with electronic machine can be stored as long as needed in non-bulky and compact systems.

Works has been done in many areas of computerization, in industry and commerce but not much has been done in school administration and management system/services.  We have therefore done this work to highlight the use of an online in the important area of student’s services.

1. SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This work is confined to the Covenant polytechnic Abia that is our area of research work.  This was done to attain a standard output that will be useful to both students and as well as the staff of institute.  It also helps in making a quick, accurate, efficient and reliable data processing.

As a result of inadequate resource such as time and information gathering facilities, this study will only focused on online admission and result checking system for Covenant Poly which is the case study of this project. This kind of project, does not only restrict to the above mentioned project, though there may be other ways of admission, but I will focus alone on the online system.

1. LIMITATION OF THE RESEARCH WORK

Cost: cost is one of the limitation to this research work were it requires huge amount of money to put up this system with such functions, and the resources that it requires in order to run effectively

Maintenance: the new system requires regular service and maintenance were to make every necessary updates.

Power supply: Availability of stable, efficient and reliable power supply is also a source of limitation this project as it depend only on source of energy to keep functioning

1.8 DEFINITIONS OF TERM

Computer Network: Computer Network is a system that connects two or more computers together using a communication link.

World Wide Web: World Wide Wed simply called www is the most important tool of the Internet. It was created in the late 1980s in Europe and was used limitedly in academic cycle.

Databases: A systematically arranged collection of computer data, structured so that it can be automatically retrieved or manipulated. It is also called databank.

File Transfer: Any kind of computer file can be sent via the Internet from one Internet user to another. Table of accounts on spreadsheets, design by a graphic artists, music sound files etc, can all be exchanged in this way.

Web Brower: This is a special kind of software that processes hypertext make-up language (HTML) document. In other words, a web browser is a computer program that interprets HTML command to collect, arranged and display the parts of a web page.

Web Site:  A website is a collection of many interconnected web pages organized by a specific college, organization company etc, containing web pages (good and commodities) on the Internet. Web site are stored on web servers. There are many web site and thousand of HTML pages on each web site. A web site is a treasure of information and entertainment.

 Hyperlinks: Hyperlinks are highlighted words and phrase you find on web documents that you can click on as to jump to some other documents or Internet services.

Online: Connected via a computer attached to or available via a central computer network.

Offline: Disconnected from computer network; describes a computer terminal or peripheral device disconnected from a computer network.

System: Set of computer components that is, an assembling of hardware, software and peripherals functioning together