DIGITAL REPOSITORY AND AUTOMATED RESULT

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015

DIGITAL REPOSITORY AND AUTOMATED RESULT PROCESSING SYSTEM: AN IMPLEMENTATION By

Omilabu, A.A.,Usman, O.L, Alaba, O. B, & Adedeji, O. B, Computer Science Department, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ogun State, Nigeria Abstract This study aimed at presenting the implementation of a robust, reliable, efficient, and cost effective system, Digital Repository and Automated Result Processing System (DRARPS), a tool to mitigate against the inadequacies in wrong computation of students’ result, delay in processing and releasing of the said results. The system was built on the web platform using five major web programming languages. The frontend interface was designed using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, while the backend functionalities are powered by PHP server side scripting language and MySQL which runs on a web server. The data used for system testing were obtained from the Department of Computer and Information Science, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ogun State, Nigeria.An empirical evaluation of the system showed that the application quicken the processing of students examination results, preserves and provides students easy access to their records as at when needed. Keywords:DRARPS, Programming institutions, Repository, Students

languages,

Results

processing,

Tertiary

Introduction Computation and preservation of students’ results and information in every semester is a fundamental issue for every educational institution (Abu and Abel 2013).These yield students’ academic records, called transcript. Christian, Lev, and Eugenia (2013) defines a transcript of academic record as a certified statement detailing a student's complete academic record at the University or other higher institutions of learning. The process of computation, and preservation of students’ examination results is tedious, time-consuming, and error prone, most especially when not automatically handled and or when large number of students are involved. The increase in students’ population over the years has made the work of 107

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 examination officers and other officers in charge of processing students’ result a very exasperating exercise (Obiniyi and Ezugwu, 2010). These processes are to be carried out every academic session; consequently it keeps the operators in an unremitting and ever challenging cycle. Except for the use of an accurate and effective system, results computation have tendency to convey misleading information to decision makers (Eyo and Ofoegbu, 2012). The record checking system in higher institutions is traditionally characterized by pasting students’ scores in a particular subject(s) on notice boards for the students to access; this has many drawbacks aside been stressful for both the students and lecturers, and all other stakeholders involved in the handling of students’ results. Many a times, when semester results, notices and students’ records are displayed on the notice board, they are more often than not vandalized. Hence, there is need to provide better and efficient alternative means of processing, preserving and displaying students’ results, and academic records that is reliable than the traditional method currently in used within the tertiary institution educational system. Several students result computation systems have been developed for use in tertiary institutions to tackle some of these problems (Abu and Abel, 2013;Moses, 2008;Ukem and Onoyom-Ita, 2011). Eludire(2011) designed an application interface system which incorporates a Microsoft Access 2003 database for processing students’ academic records. BharamagoudarGeeta and Totad (2013), proposes a simple interface for the maintenance of students’ information. Intelligent Knowledge-Based System (IKBS) was built by Ekpenyong (2008) using various programming facilities and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet package. Critical evaluation of these systems confirmed that, most of them are not adequate to meet the need of the tertiary institutions’ challenges. Most of these systems process students’ results with high error rate and produce inconsistent outputs, thereby making data integrity a big challenge. Digital Repository and Automated Results Processing (DRARP) system provides an efficient means of processing, preserving and displaying students’ results, academic records and other relevant notices to students. As part of its benefits, DRARPenables stress-free, speed-up the processing of students’ examination results and eradicate vandalization of students’ records that have characterized the traditional method (Eludire, 2011; Ukem and Onoyome, 2011). 108

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 Therefore, this paper presents the implementation of Digital Repository and Automated Result Processing System (DRARPS). Problem Statement Accuracy and efficiency of computing, preserving and presenting of students’ results and information have been major requirements of tertiary institutions and educational establishments since their creation (Akinmosin, 2014). However, this hasposed several challenges and barriers to both students and other stakeholders. According to Obiniyi and Ezugwu (2010), the students’ academic record is designed to provide both students and staff with numerous services, so as toassists the students in attaining their academic goals and management objectives respectively.Consequently, DRARPS was builtto address the above challenges and remove barrier associated with accessing student results and record in tertiary institutions. The basis of the study is to develop a digital repository and automated result processing system that will provide and allow the students to have effective, efficient, stress-free and speedy access to theirexamination results and as well eliminate sabotaging the efforts of officers in-charge of handling students’ records. Related Works Students’ result computation seems to be an old area of researchwhichis significant to every educational institution;continuous improvement on the existing systems provides better solution to the challenges of managing students’ academic records (Orobor, 2015). Barrett (1999) encapsulates the essence of a student information system, and thus, defines Student Management Information Systems (SMIS) as “an integrated software package that maintains, supports, and provides inquiry, analysis, andcommunication tools that organize student accountability data into information to support the educationalprocess”.Akinmosin (2014), claimed that his intentionfor the design andimplementation of a University’s automated students Result Management System (RMS), wasto put in place, a system with capability of storing current and historical data,organizing and analyzing these data as required and as well as integrating them with other Student InformationSystems (SIS) packages if the need arises. As an attempt at automating the management of students’ academic records, Ezenma, Emmanuel and Choji, (2014),examined the inadequacies involved in the manual method of compiling and processing students’ resultsproposed a software 109

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 application which facilitates automated processing of the results, though the study focused on public secondary schools in Nigeria. In this paper, the inadequacies involved in the existing method of processing and managing students’ academic records in tertiary institutions are examined. Specifically, in Nigeria, most tertiary institutions make use of ‘semi-automated’ software packages that run on stand-alone computer for managing students’ results and academic records. The limitations of these systems include but not limited slow response time, high error rate, poor storage, crashing while processing results, generating inconsistent outputs and lack of referential integrity. It is therefore, sufficient to argue that the current systems of managing students’ academic records in some universities lack ‘integrity’. This paper therefore, proposes a dependable solution to the above shortcomingsthrough the development a software system on web platform, using five major web programming languages. The system provides efficient service delivery in academic records management and eliminates the delays associated withsoftware applications that are currently been used in many tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The proposed system was built and examined with reverence to the peculiar situations and problems associated with educational system. Material and Method For the purpose of actualizing the set goals of this study,Digital Repository and Automated Result Processing System (DRARPS) was developed. In this research, repetitive and dynamic model were used to develop the DRARPS application, using HTML5/CSS3/JAVASCRIPT/PHP/MySQL. The front-end interface was designed using HTML5 (Hyper-text Markup Language), CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheet) and JavaScript, while the backend functionalities are powered by PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) server side scripting language and MySQL (My Structured Query Language) which runs on a web server. For local testing, WAMP(Windows Apache MySQL and PHP) server was used.

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Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 4.1

Design/Modelling

Figure 1: Architecture of the propose system (Source: Design setup, 2016) Operational Description a. The Database:The database (Result Management System) makes available facilities for administration, computation, documentation, preservationand presentation of students’ academic records. b. The Resource Centre: The resource centre enabling digital material that all students should posses for all available result. c. The DRARPS: The DRARPS is a central directory/repository that links the students and lecturers with examination records and information, such as portable document format (pdf) files, website, results and notices. This was developed using the programming language below: i. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), a standardized system for tagging text files to achieve font, colour, graphic, and hyperlink effects on World Wide Web pages. It was used as the markup language for the presentation of this system. ii. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), a style sheet language used for describing the look and formatting of a document written in a markup language. It was used to style the look of the system. 111

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 iii.

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. It was used as the backend development language for DRARPS. iv. JavaScript, an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. It was used to set actions for certain behaviours in the DRARPS. v. MySQL (My Structured Query Language), a widely used open-source relational database management system. It was used for data management and organization in the DRARPS. vi. WAMPServer (Windows Apache MySQL PHP Server), a web development platform on Windows that allows the creation of dynamic web applications with Apache2, PHP and MySQL. It was used to create a local testing server for DRARPS. d. The Web Server:The web server accepts and responds to the student requests. By getting URL, translates it, send it back over the internet from local disk, execute it, and send the output of the program back over the internet to the requesting party. e. The Web Browser:The web browser is an interface through which the students, lecturer and administrators retrieve, present, and traverse information resources on DRARPS.

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Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 DRARPS Flowchart

Figure 2: The Flowchart of the proposeDRARPS (Source: Implementation setup, 2016) The flowchart in figure 2shows nine (9) distinct subsystems function as follows: i. The ‘Log In’ sub-system ii. The ‘View/Edit Profile’ sub-system iii. The ‘View Result Sheet’ sub-system iv. The ‘View Result Board’ sub-system v. The ‘Manage Department’ sub-system vi. The ‘Manage Courses’ sub-system vii. The ‘Manage Student’ sub-system viii. The ‘Manage Result’ sub-system ix. The ‘Manage Session’ sub-system Three of these functions are meant for the students, while five (5) are meant for the administrator of the system. 113

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 Implementation Implementation Set-Up The developed software application was run on the system with the given specifications: Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 Operating System. Processor: Intel ® Core(TM) i3-3110M CPU @ 2.40GHz RAM: 4.00 GB Hard Disk:- 500GB LogIn/ Home Page The login/home page allows both administrators and students to login to their respective accounts. Provision of wrong credentials will be automatically and instantaneously detected by the system here.

Figure 3: Login/ Home Page The Student’s Profile Page The students’ profile page is the landing page of every student whenever they login into the system. This page consists of their bio-data, which are updateable and links to other modules like the result board and their academic records.

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Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 Figure 4: Student’s Profile Page The Student’s Result Sheet Page

This page comprises all results belonging to the student who has been able to successfully logged-in at the moment. The sheet consists of courses and scores obtained by the student and is grouped according to sessions.

Figure 5: Result Sheet Page The Administrator Dashboard Page This page is the landing page for the administrator after a successful login. It consists of statistical information about the repository system, including some account management modules for the administrator. 115

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015

Figure 6: Admin Dashboard The Department Management Page This page allows the administrator to add departments that students registered in the system would belong to.

Figure 7:Department Management Page (add department section) The Course Management Page This page includes the module for complete course management which includes creating, reading, updating and deleting (CRUD) courses.

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Figure8(a): Course Management (add courses)

Figure8(b) Course Management (view courses) The Add Result Page This page allows the administrator to add result for each student. Results can be added one by one or by comma separated value (CSV) file format (for bulk upload). It includes a form for inputting the students’ scores, another for uploading CSV files and a picture showing the format and arrangement of the CSV file to be uploaded.

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Figure9: Add Result Page The Students’ Management Page This page allows full CRUD management of student. This is where the students are being registered under their respective departments. Upon registration, a user account is automatically created for the student, using his/her matric/registration number as the username and surname as the password (lowercase only).

Figure10(a): Students’ Management Page (add students section) 118

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 The Students’ Result Page This page allows viewing of students’ results.

Figure10(b): Students’ Management Page (view students section)

Figure11(a): Students’ Result Page (view students result)

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Figure11(b): Students’ Result Page (view students result & CGPA) System Testing Testing of the newly developed system is important because it enables the developer access how end users interact with the system. DRARPS was tested with students’ academic records sourced from the Department of Computer Science, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ogun State, Nigeria. The department lecturers and more than 70% of student population of the department were involved in the testing phase. Students of computer science were considered appropriate for this research due to their largest population when compared with other departments in the College of Science and Information Technology of the University and as well required little training efforts on the system usage. Students’ academic records from 2011/2012 to 2015/2016 session were used for system testing and users were allowed to interact freely with DRARPS which runs in parallel with current system of managing students’ academic records and transcript generation. The overall remarks from the users confirmed that the proposed DRARPS is able to eliminate the shortcomings of the current system with a high level of data integrity due to the accuracy, consistency and timeliness of the results computed and transcripts generated.

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Journal of Science and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 Conclusion and Future work The DRARPS is an innovative way of digitizing student results for provision of accurate computation, instant access to the needed results and record at most required time, thereby reducing the stress of the students checking their results. Lecturers and non-academic personnel handling results are not left out in the benefit. DRARPS provides better way of communicating with students easily, the outcomes of their academic performances. It is flexible and modifiable application with CGPA module, via graphical user interface (GUI) rather than command-line approach. Also, DRARPS is user friendly, reasonably secure, and ensure data integrity, resulting from the use of a relational database management system. The lecturers can now with ease, update the students, while students get updated with their academics records and information online using DRARPS via both personal computers and mobile devices. This research has been able to develop and implement another result management system that is efficient, robust, reliable and cost effective. Furtherance, on this research, would require determining the level of DRARPS efficiency by carrying out empirical study on the quality of service (QoS) metric with respect to access from remote systems, thereby further improving the quality and functionalities of the system interface using more updated design such as Google’s Material Design. References Abu, U. O and Abel , M., (2013). “Data Analysis and Result Computation (DARC) Algorithm for Tertiary Institutions”, Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSRJCE), 14 (1), 63-69, 2013. Akinmosin J. (2014), “Automated Students Result Management System Using Oracle’s Database, Forms and Reports”, Journal of Information Engineering and Applications, www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-5782 (print) ISSN 2225-0506 (online), Vol.4, No.11, 2014. Barrett, S. (1999). Information’s Systems: An Exploration of Factors Influencing Effective Use.Journal ofResearch on Computing in Education, (Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 4-16). Bharamagoudar S.R., Geeta R. B. and Totad S. G. (2013). Web Based Student Information Management System. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, Vol.2, Issue 6. 121

Journal of Science Education and Research (JOSER) Vol. 1 No 2, 2015 Cristian C., Lev T., and Eugenia T. (2013)."Secure andconvenient computerized transcript system:6.033 DesignProject", http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. Accessed 29/01/2015 Eludire A. A., (2011). “The Design and Implementation of Student Academic Record Management System”.Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Vol.3, No.8, Pp.707-712. Ekpenyong M. E., (2008). “A Real-Time IKBS for students results computation”, International Journal of Physical Sciences (Ultra Scientist of Physical Sciences) Volume 20, Number 3(M), September – December, 2008. Available: http://www.mySQL.com, (July 22,2012) Ezenma A. A., Emmanuel B, &Choji D. N., (2014). “Design and Implementation of Result Processing System for Public Secondary Schools in Nigeria”, International Journal of Computer and Information Technology, (ISSN: 2279 – 0764) Volume 03 – Issue 01, January 2014. Eyo O. U and Ofoegbu F. A., (2012). “A Software Application for University Students Results Processing”, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, 35 (1), 2012. Moses E. E., (2008). “A Real-Time IKBS for students results computation” International Journal of physical Sciences (Ultra scientist of physical sciences) Volume 20, Number3(M), September-December, 2008. Obiniyi, A. A. and Ezugwu, E. A. (2010).“Design and Implementationof Students’InformationSystem for tertiary Institutionsusing neural networks: An open Source Approach”, International Journal of Green Computing, 1(1), 1-15, January-June 2010 1. Orobor, A. I., (2015), “A Novel Framework for Student Result Computation as a Cloud Computing Service”, American Journal of Systems and Software, 2015, Vol. 3, No. 1, 13-19 Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajss/3/1/2 © Science and Education Publishing DOI:10.12691/ajss-3-1-2. Ukem , E. O. and Onoyom-Ita, E. O, (2011). A Software Application For The Processing Of Students Results; Global Journal of Pure and Applied SciencesVolume 17 No. 4, 2011. 122