Design and Implementation of Student Result Notification System
CHAPTER ONE
Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of this project is to develop a mobile based result notification application, which will be highly efficient for the process of retrieving necessary information pertaining to every relevant notification about the student results. The objectives are:
- To design and implement a mobile application system, which is user friendly and can provide up to date information
- To evaluate the performance of the developed software application on users mobile devices by installing the application on respective students device.
- To get users review of current software i.e. including a contact page in the application which will enable users/students to send feedbacks, complaints and suggestions to the administrator as this would be needed in improving the system in subsequent updates.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
- Information: This is the result of processing raw data about a particular entity and presenting it in a way that is meaningful.• Push Notification:A push notification is a message that pops up on a mobile device. App publishers can send them at any time; users don’t have to be in the app or using their devices to receive them.• Information system: A collection of input, output, feedback and environment that collects, processes, stores, analyses, retrieve and disseminate information for specific purpose.• Android Studio: This is an integrated development environment (IDE) for developing on the Android platform. It was announced on May 16, 2013.• ADT (Android Developer Tools): The ADT is a plugin for Eclipse that provides a suite of tools that are integrated with the Eclipse IDE. It offers you access to many features that help you develop Android applications.• Android Emulator:The emulator lets you prototype, develop and test Android applications without using a physical device.• Ionic Framework is a convenient framework for developing hybrid mobile applications as it is very fast for development of mobile applications.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
The major aim in this thesis is to establish a channel of communication for school members by developing and designing mobile application for result checking. This mobile application provides information and data upon the request to all members in educational environment (students, teachers and school authority). Therefore, it is helpful to review the field of school result information systems, and describe the current situation of this field, also it will be useful to describe the limitations of school result management systems and discuss possible improvements.
School Result Management Systems
As universities in developing countries like Nigeria embrace information and communication technologies, they employ it in transforming their record keeping and information management operations. Particularly, students result management system (RMS) is one of the key information systems that readily attracts the attention of most universities [1,2,3,4]. While the universities in the developed countries already have well established students result management systems, their counterparts in the developing countries are having series of adhoc and standalone result management and dissemination systems that provide only some basic elements of students result management system. Equally, majority of the students RMS do not have web interfaces and others do not integrate well with the other university-wide information system. The major challenge is that the universities outsource the development of such RMS without proper understanding of the essential functionalities and compatibility issues the RMS should afford to the university [5,6,7,8]
Hohlfeld, Ritzhaupt and Barron (2010) discussed the determining role of information and communication technology to communicate among schools and communities by presenting a conceptual framework for uniting families, schools, and community members using information and communication technology, and uses data collected in Florida from the 2003 to 2007 school years. This study has collected data during the four school years from several online databases provided by the Department of Education, Florida to the public for research purposes. The data collected were merged by school years, school code and school type (Elementary, middle, and high schools), after that the date was tested by using logistic models with repeated measures for categorical variables. The results of study varied because rapid changes of hardware technology and proliferation during the study years, the results can be divided into:
- Tools used to communicate: The most widely used method of communication was print media. Followed by school websites. Then radio broadcasting, television, and hotline communications.
- The members involved in technology planning process: The number of member community who actively contribute to technology planning has increased.
Existing Systems Overview
Most universities now provide examination results on their website and this is a very common practice. When results are made available on the website, students have to login by providing a username or ID and password before they can view their result. This ensures that examination results are protected from unauthorized access. Although websites are readily accessible and provide options like printing and saving, these benefits could easily be inaccessible if a user does not have access to the internet. Also, the student must visit the website to know that the examination results are available.
While websites seem to be a very good option in countries where internet is readily available, its impact can be less felt and it can be quite inconvenient and expensive in countries with poor internet access. In such places, students will have to visit cyber cafes where they have to pay to check their grades. Other existing systems are:
IVRS
Interactive Voice Response System is a self guided result checking system. In this system, a student dials a number and listens to computer generated or recorded voice direction. The voice instructs the student on what action (usually by pressing keys) to take to supply the needed information. The supplied information is then used to generate the student’s result, which is spoken to the user.
While email seems to be another intuitive means of sending results and other information to students, even without them requesting for it. It requires internet connection, and although several mobile phones allow accessing of emails on them, it is seldom used by mobile phone users (at least students). Email allows offers the benefit of mass distribution of information, which is also possible using SMS as Bulk SMS.
CHAPTER THREE
SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
INTRODUCTION
This chapter explains the mobile result check developed for computer science department, University of Benin, through describing system analysis and design, documentation of the proposed system. It is the most suitable way to understand the system through explaining technologies used in system and system developing phases. Analyzing the system makes the system understandable by users.
METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION
Data was collected through use of online repositories, interviews and in depth literature review with the aim of collecting reliable and complete data that can provide concrete conclusions and recommendations for the study.
Observation
I observed the result disseminating activities of University of Benin from computer science HOD office. Details about results were collected from the admin. This was done to make sure our developed software was in accordance of the school specification.
Interviews
An interview is a data collection method where a researcher asks a respondent a set of questions and records his/her answers (Neuman, 2003). We used interviews to establish grounds for accessing the acceptability and feasibility of our proposed solution and to understand the business environment with its associated needs. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with the interest of getting data about the current mode of result dissemination and exploring the entire result management at the school. This is vital in probing for the theory to get respondent’s opinions about the appropriateness of the intended solution and the challenges in the current system.
CHAPTER FOUR
SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
INTRODUCTION
This section shows the running of the developed mobile-based result checking application. It allows student access to result anytime and from anywhere by smart phone. This section describes the technologies used, the system requirements and the various functionalities step by step under each module with their outputs. In this chapter, a description of the system with snapshots will be given to illustrate the use of the system.
CHOICE OF DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGIES
A set of technologies that offer many improvements and flexibility in the use of result checking application will be clarified.
Mobile application technology
The developed system is mainly based on a mobile phone, because the mobile device properties are like the available ones in the mobility with user, pocket size, allow access to internet, easy to use, etc. The author used set of mobile development technologies and tools to develop application for the system. The most important techniques and tools that have been used are:
- Android Studio: This is an Integrated Development Environment tool used to develop android application and programs the version of eclipse 4.2.1 which used by developer in the thesis.
- Android SDK: The different in libraries in the Android system depend on the versions. (SDK) libraries are development tools necessary to build and test applications for Android, The application that was developed in Android 4.0 API level 14 or above.
- Application development language: the author developed mobile application in this thesis by Java programing language with Android API.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
SUMMARY
This project, through development of the mobile application for result checking attempted to provide effective means of result checking between students and school. The author took into account the problems and limitation in the currently used system when developing the application. The application relies on cloud computing which provides a good opportunity for schools with limited budget to use the application. Cloud computing provides important advantage such as reducing the costs of buying infrastructure for the system and high flexibility in controlling of system capabilities. Furthermore, the application offers set of features to help the school in managing result and building a positive partnership with students.
CONCLUSION
With the help of a mobile device, access to information can be done anytime and anywhere. It is worth mentioning that the application works with two mode such as offline and online. In offline mode, it works without internet connection by using mini database in mobile resource, which it then re synchronizes with the main database in cloud when the internet connection is back. In online mode, it works with internet. After comparing the app with other specialized applications in the field of school systems, found that it provides most features of the other applications in a one application, as well as provides ease of usage.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The result checking application in this thesis provides interfaces for mobile application which run on Android, therefore it is important to move towards developing interfaces for an application that runs on another mobile system such as IOS, Windows mobile and BlackBerry. A survey can be contacted at schools to collect options of teachers, parents and students from real life so that, the developed mobile result checker can be improved further based on the results of the survey.
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