Development of an Online Tutorial System for Students

CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND STUDY

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Information Technology has revolutionized the way we go about doing our daily activities. The web for instance has revolutionized the way information can be accessed thereby making the world a global village.

The impact of information technology has grown to the level that virtually all domains of life now has everything in Electronic. Now we have E-Commerce, E-Examination, E-Voting, E-Registration. The availability and deployment of all of these is made possible with the use of the Internet (the biggest of all the Computer networks), a local area network (intranet) for deploying E-Solutions within a restricted locality e.g. an office, telephone lines (using radio wave as its medium).

Of interest also is the advent of information technology enabled devices such as the handsets, the PDAs and tablets that is used with the aforementioned web technology which makes the paradigm of information storage, access and retrieval to be mobile.

The Internet is a wide area network consisting of over five hundred million hosts that can be accessed via a workstation that is connected to its service. It serves as a medium of connection between millions of peoples, airlines, organizations, military, educational institutions and government in the most remote of areas all over the world. It serves as an electronic transmission medium to engage in exchanging of information, also aiding transportation (digitally) from location to location connecting users online. Also, the internet is a very good platform for advertisement and awareness of any product.

Information is obviously the most prominent function of the internet. The internet has grown from its inception into a giant warehouse of information, providing millions of people access to any information required by just a click of a button. It exposes one to a wide range of information resources, thereby posing as a giant database stacked with information.

Due to the universal access of the internet, student tutorials and learning activitites can be processed over the web.

The project work which is focused on modeling and designing an Online Tutorial System through the Web. For the benefits of the students in the university; the online tutorial will include registration of students like their personal information and also made available video and audio type document for downloads, realtime communication between students and tutors.

The registration data of the students are stored in a highly secured Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and the students are provided with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to communicate with the database.

1.1 AIM AND OBJECTIVES.

The aim of this project is to develop an Online Tutorial System for the Students of the university and objectives of this study include:

1) To create a system that is user friendly and simple as possible for users.
2) To create a system that make available a virtual class that is not limited to any number of studennts.
3) To increase the throughput by increasing the number of students that could participate in a particular tutorial class per unit time.
4) To employ the use of internet technology to influence tutorial dellivery.
5) To design a systemm that made available videos, audios, images and texts type of documents for learning system.

1.2 SCOPE OF THE STUDY.

The scope of this project covers the registration of students' personal information, assign tutorial classes to each student, enable each student to have realtime conversation with their tutor and colleagues, setting a unique password for confidentiality of personal information such as login menu. The limitation of this project is the unavailability of realtime video chatting.

1.3 PROJECT METHODOLOGY.

The methodologies used in developing this project work include obtaining information from different tutorial centres most especially the ones aorganised with in the school. The methods used include: interview of personnel, and search through the internet most particularly in the programming area of the system.

The programming parameters used for implementing the project include:

- Php (Hypertext Preprocessor) programming language. Php is a Server Side Scripting language that runs with the help of a server. Servers such as the IIS (Internet Information Service) or Apache web servers could be used to run the application.
- JavaScript. This is a Browser Side Scripting language that is used to control information relating to the browser of the Client i.e. the user when wrong operations are performed.
- MySQL. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) based on Structured Query Language (SQL) which contains the engine that is used to store, update, validate and also keeps information about the type of legal operations to be carried out.

The choice of Php programming language is that the application will be available for use through the web. Php is a programming language that can be easily manipulated and can perform serialization which enables security.

1.4 CHAPTER LAYOUT.

This project consists of five chapters. The chapter layout consists of the following.

Chapter one consists of introduction of the project

Chapter two consists of the literature review

Chapter three discusses the system analysis and the design

Chapter four consists of the system implementation

Chapter five which is the final chapter contains the summary and conclusion

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 REVIEW OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM

The existing system is a manual based application; due to this, proper documentation and adequate information cannot be retrieved. Also there are various limitation ranging from ristricted number candidates in a particular tutorial class due physical class size constraints, inability of the students to access previous lectures delivered etc. Tutorial Students' Data are also not properly handled as there are no documentation of all the students and their respective activities. In the case where documentation take place, some files have already been attacked by pests and are already prone to illegal alteration by some administrators who might want to assist students during registration. The record office of the tutorial centre is loaded with files considering the growth in the admission of student for tutorialr; the cabinets cannot accommodate the ever-increasing students' files. Therefore, files are kept on the floor which makes the record office be in an untidy state.

2.1 PROBLEMS OF EXISTING SYSTEM

The following are the problems of the existing systems:

- Duplication of student registration record within the tutorial centre.
- Difficulty in updating, retrieving and collecting information needed.
- Inefficient and time wasting procedures and protocols.
- There are frequent cases and reports of missing and unlawful alteration of records.
- Difficulty in accommodating the ever-growing students within the class.
- Inefficiency in the delivery processes of lectures.

2.2 THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

The proposed system is to be modeled on the existing system and the existing system will be the foundation block of the proposed system.

The aims and objectives of this proposed system is to eliminate the problems associated with the existing system which is already highlighted above.

2.3 DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DBMS)

In order to create, modify and gain access to database, special software is required. This special software is called Database Management System (DBMS). DBMS is system tailored software used to meet the database requirements and provide special features like Query type and Data Dictionary. A DBMS raises the level of abstraction (overwhelming processes are hidden away from the programmer) for the end users, examples of DBMS are FOXBASE, Oracle, Visual FoxPro, MS- ACCESS, DBaseIV, Paradox etc.

TYPES OF DBMS

- Hierarchical Database
- Network Database
- Relational Database

HIERACHICAL DATABASE

Hierarchical database is a top-down or branching tree management. Each item falls within a higher level data item and so on to the top of the tree. Thus, if a hierarchical database contained data pertaining to a library system, it could be organized into Management, Staff and Borrower. It as shown in the illustration below:

Management

Staff

Students

NETWORK DATABASE

It is similar to the hierarchical database model except that an entity can have more than one parent. The approach was designed by CODASYL (The Conference of Data System Languages). The network is based upon the ideas of linked group of data. These links are used to express relationship between different data groups. When new set of data are added, it is often found that the source of the required data is already stored for other purposes.

RELATIONAL DATABASE

It is the most widely used data model among those database systems currently being purchased by organizations because it is efficiency and flexibility. The data model is based on a relation, which is represented as a two-dimensional table. Rows in the table constitute the records and the columns are the attributes of the entity. E.g. a student as a Relation name is given below.

A TABLE

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

A relational database will be used to develop an Online Student Tutorial System for the University in this project. It is based on individual database also called microcomputer database. It is a collection of integrated files primarily accessed by just one person. The database and the DBMS are under the direct control of the user. They are stored either on the user's hard disk drive or on a LAN file server.

CHARACTERISTICS OF DATA STORED IN A DATABASE In order to have an efficient database, there are certain characteristics that must be met: i.e.

- It is substantially non-redundant
- It is program independent (data independence)
- It is usable by all the programs.
- It includes all necessary structural inter-relations of data
- It have a common approach to the retrieval, insertion and amendment of data

2.4 ADVANTAGES OF A DATABASE SYSTEM

A database system has the following advantages:

- It allows for easy and quick retrieval of records.
- It helps to store and manage large volume of data.
- It helps to secure data stored in it because it has security features attached to it.

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