Design and Implementation of Electronic Logbooks for Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES)
Chapter One
AIM AND OBJECTIVES
AIM
To develop an electronic logbook for Students’ Industrial Work Experience Scheme (S.I.W.E.S)
OBJECTIVES
The following are objectives of the study
- To review and analyze the existing system
- To develop a software capable of logging students’ work entries in an electronic format.
- To bridge the gap between the students and supervisors during the course of the industrial training.
- To act as a source of information to interns by providing a notice board on each users page.
- To provide important links that are capable of enhancing the performance and knowledge of the Nigerian graduate.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 INTRODUCTION
Within the past few years, there have been a consistent growth of interest in Information and Communication technology and the consequent demographic changes in our society. Most sectors of the economy have been influenced in one way or the other mostly due to better access to information. There has been a shift in trend of the working pattern of the twenty first century human.
One sector which has been greatly affected by the growth in information technology is the Education sector with changes in patterns of research and collaboration between academics/students, social interaction and information dissemination, examination pattern and so on. There are many software and applications that have been developed to aid learning.
Within the university community, logbook is commonly used and often required. In the developed parts of the world many experiments have moved from the traditional paper logbooks to some sort of electronic logbook. Some have used electronic logbooks for as long as 17 years, for example the Alcator (Alto Campo Torus) experiment at MASSACHUSETTS Institute of Technology started using an electronic logbook in 1991. Many have developed their own electronic logbook from scratch, others have taken one of some available solutions and adapted it for their own use. Mikael B¨arlund(2008) With regards to students’ industrial training, electronic logbook is almost as important as the Industrial Training itself since it is needed in order to maintain a set of log entries made by interns who might be located in different physical locations. An electronic logbook also facilitates multiple simultaneous access, easy search ability and other functionalities that the traditional logbook cannot support.
A logbook was originally a book for recording readings from the ship log, and is used to determine the distance a ship traveled within a certain amount of time. The readings of the log have been recorded in equal times to give the distance traveled with respect to a given start position. Today’s ship’s log has grown to contain many other types of information, and is a record of operational data relating to a ship or submarine, such as weather conditions, times of routine events and significant incidents, crew complement or what ports were docked at and when. It is essential to traditional navigation, and must be filled in at least daily. Today, Logbook is used in a variety of areas, ranging from professional to academic and research, information gathering through data mining etc.
The dramatic growth in information resulted in the need to for an efficient way of keeping and retrieving vital information and to also be able to guarantee the integrity of such stored information, protecting it from harm or unwanted manipulation and/or interference.
A logbook is usually written in paper (book of log), it is therefore susceptible to damage since books can get torn, wear out easily or be easily damaged. A better way to store information is the electronic logbook.
HISTORY
According to wavetrax(2014), “the ship’s log originated from the small wooden board or ‘Chip Log’, often weighted with lead that was for centuries attached to a line and thrown over the stern. The weight of the log would keep it in the same place in the water while the ship moved away. By measuring the length of line used up in a set period of time, mariners could calculate the speed of their journey.
As a voyage progressed, the course, speed and other information came to be marked down in a book that was called a log. Before technology was introduced these logs were an indispensable source for recording what actually happened. They helped navigators surmise where they were and how far they had travelled and how much longer they had to stay at sea. They provided accountability to a ship’s owners and traders. They were designed to be as immune to faking as possible.
Away from land, there was usually no reliable corroboration of events apart from the crew’s own account in the middle of an expanse of blue and grey and green; and in long journeys, memories always blur and facts disperse. A log provided as accurate an account as could be gleaned in real time.
National Maritime Museum Royal Observatory (2014);Records were kept from the earliest days of exploration in the 15th century when the Portuguese mariners took to the open ocean, leaving familiar landmarks and costliness behind them. At first these were jealously guarded secret documents holding the key to the routes for the spice trade and the riches of the Orient. Some were more humble accounts of the wonders encountered by Europeans as they ventured into the exotic world of the Middle and Far East. Of these early attempts to forge trade links few documents remain, although those of Christopher Columbus’s epic undertaking to find a route to china and the Spice Islands, only of course to find ‘a New World’, have been transcribed many times.
The passage of time saw more ships from more nations engaging in deep sea trade, exploration and inevitably war. The number of voyages increased dramatically in the 17th century as the imperial powers of Spain and Portugal found themselves competing with France, Holland and England. Voyages of primary exploration were replaced by undertakings of a state-run nature, such as empire building, trade and administration. At the same time, the officers of these ships began to keep official records, which were the beginnings of the logbook, similar to what is used today.
English logbooks survive from as early as the mid-17th century and a few more general journals from even earlier. By 1730, the Admiralty identified the need for consistency and issued the order in their Naval Instructions of 1731:
ELECTRONIC LOGBOOK
Wikipedia.org (2014):An electronic logbook is a computer based software for recording(logging) states, events or simply conditions used for complex machines like aircraft, nuclear plants, particle accelerators, various areas on board ships replacing paper based logbooks etc.
This version of a logbook was derived from the old-fashioned paper based logbooks which have been used I the maritime sector. Today a wide spectrum of different implementations of these electronic logbooks is available, even if most versions are based on the classical client-server approach. Here the electronic logbook serves a client which is in most cases a simple web browser.
There has been a substantial interest in the use of electronic logbooks for the past few years due to its advantages over the conventional logbook like ease of access from remote locations and durability. The following examples illustrates the current trend in information management as it relates to logbook.
CHAPTER THREE
SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
INTRODUCTION
Systems analysis is the examination of a system into its constituent pieces for the purpose of studying how those constituent pieces relate and work (Subramanian, 2000). The focus of this research project and this chapter in particular, is to conduct a system analysis and design on Electronic logbook. This chapter discusses analysis existing logbook and its limitation. It also discusses the methodology used, data collection and proposed design system and as will the database structure.
ANALYSIS OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM
System analysis is the procedure by which activities in an organization are studied with the aim of determining how to operate it most efficiently. The traditional logbook is a paper logbook containing various forms and charts. Such forms include the students’ information form, progress charts and forms for use by the Industrial Training Fund officials. There are additional forms that are expected to be filled and returned to the school authority for processing and forwarding to the ITF. The logbook requires the user to write down his daily activity in the industry in which he/she was attached.
From the analysis of the current system the following conclusions are drawn:
(I) the school allocates logbook manually to students.
(II) ITF forms are also given to students and are expected to be filled by both the industry
Supervisor and the institution
(III) Difficulties are experienced in getting information about the students’ progress
(IV) It is difficult to keep a logbook safe for the duration of the exercise since it is expected to be filled daily.
(V) It is difficult to tell if a student is actually doing what he claims to be doing since approval is strictly restricted to the industry supervisor and there are no regular updates of information regarding the students. The format for each of the forms and the information they contain is given below.
CHAPTER FOUR
SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION, TESTING AND INTEGRATION
INTRODUCTION
“Implementation is a realization of a technical specification or algorithm as a program, software component, or other computer system through computer programming and deployment”. (Smith, 2001). This chapter will focuses on the implementation of the electronic logbook for SIWES
CHOICE OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
PHP was chosen for the design and implementation of some of the components of the Electronic logbook due to its robust built-in functions that provides the capability of executing commands that enables interaction with the database, especially in the aspect of posting and retrieving form details. PHP is object oriented, supports inheritance or usability of codes, it is highly popular and used in most web application development, well documented and has good support libraries and it integrates very well with Hypertext Markup language (HTML), the main language for designing user interfaces.
The front-end of the application (the GUI that the user utilizes to interact with the databases) is achieved using HTML, CSS and Java Script programming languages. MySQL database engine was used. It was chosen due to its generality and simplicity compared to others.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
SUMMARY
The Electronic Logbook system draw inspiration from the traditional paper logbook and is designed to solve problems that are associated with the traditional logbook. We have in this project, added some other functions that are leaning related to enable interns have maximum industrial training experience. We have described and analyzed already existing computer systems designed to carter for one problem area or the other and have been able to come out with a system that is adaptable to the Nigerian system. We have also reviewed several literatures related to the area of Electronic logbook. Ultimately, we applied some of the models to solve the logbook problems.
CONCLUSION
From the traditional logbook available to us and the already published papers on the area of Electronic logbooks, we have designed an application for logging in students’ experiences, otherwise called the Electronic logbook. The software was able to perform the main functions which is to log in information about students daily experiences.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The development of any software is not a one-time affair, the reason being that challenges are bound to occur as humans evolves. Efficient result can only be obtained if the logbook is used efficiently and also upgraded when the need arise, therefore it is necessary therefore to make recommendations that will guide computer user as well as the administrators.
- It is recommended that the system be adopted since it will save cost and boost the learning experience of interns
- The system may be upgraded to suit other needs of the university community, especially as it regards internship
- The ITF should adapt the electronic method since ITF forms pass from hand to hand before getting to the officials.
REFERENCES
- Mikael B (2008). Usability Study of Shift Logbooks In Physics Experiments at CERN. A master’s thesis presented at HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering, Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory.
- V Altini , S.J Subramanian (2010). Journal of Physics: Conference Series Volume 219 Part 2
- Phys.: Conf. Ser.219 022027 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/219/2/022027
- Carrie J. W, Dennis S, Kathryn A. Gibb E, Terry P. C and S.J Subramanian (2000). Implementation of an electronic logbook for intensive care units. Proc AMIA Symp. 2002: 840–844. PMCID: PMC2244233
- Herman S and Ushma J S (2013) Electronic logbooks for residents: A step forward. Indian J Anaesth. 2013 Mar-Apr; 57(2): 210–212.doi: 10.4103/0019-5049.111878. PMCID: PMC3696281
- olubodum Olufemi(2012)logbook for Industrial Supervision and Training-a look at paper and digital logbooks. Instructor, writer, course developer, and technologists at the University of Lagos Dental School, page1-10.
- http://www.wikepedia.org/logbook. Electronic logbook, 29th June, 2014
- http://www.slideshare.net/ojolubodun/logbook-for-industrial-supervision-and-training-2
- iop science electronic collaborative logbook. (http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/396/6/062014), 2012 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 396 062014
