CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
An online assignment handling is a system contained within the Module virtual learning environment. The functionality of the standard assignment handling module has been extended to cater for all the Department’s needs in terms of receiving assignments from students, making them available to tutors to mark, returning grades, comments and marked work to students and keeping Registry and course administrators informed at all stages of the process. Extension requests are an integral part of the system.
Universities, Polytechnics, and colleges of education are considered the main provider of knowledge in various fields. Various courses of studies are taught in institutions, covering several fields including applied Sciences, Math, Computer, Human Resource, and Accounting. Most courses at universities consist of theoretical as well as practical subject matter. To evaluate the level of understanding and degree of comprehension among students, assignments are often given.
Assignments are submitted by students either individually or in groups. Assignment management involves collecting, marking, and redistributing to students. Tregobov (2017) breaks the process down into four stages: submission, recording, marking, and return. Online assignment submission and management (OASM) involves the use of the World-Wide Web, the Internet and computers to aid this process (Jones, 2019). With traditional assignment submission system, lots of problems arise especially when the students have to submit the answers of the assignment to the lecturer. There may be problems due to distance, time, or format of the assignment (written or printed). Also, every learning process requires administrative support. Much of this administrative support is to some degree transparent but if the latter is not well organized it could disrupt the flow of learning between students and the staff.
As the educational world is moving faster and becoming more competitive, almost every university started to use an online submission system, or newer technologies to facilitate their task, to have more time, and to be in pace with this fast moving IT world.
This project is about designing and developing an online assignment submission process for Computer Science department, Federal Polytechnic Oko. This system allows student to submit their assignment to the submission point and the system will record the information about the submitted assignment: Registration number, Student name, Department, Session, Level, Course code, and Submission date & time. The collection of the assignment is passed to the lecturer for the marking process. After finished marking, the lecturer passed the marked assignment to the submission point. The operator at the submission point will key in the submission code into the system one more time.
This system is important to replace the manual system that is used at Computer Science department, Federal Polytechnic Oko now. By developing this system, it is expected to overcome the problems of manual system that being used. The development of this system is needed because it provides a systematic method in managing the submission of student assignments. The deliverables are including client interface, client program, server interface, server program. The aim of this system is to help the student and lecturer in assignment submission processes.
- Statement of the Problems
These problems includes:
- Due to the manual mode for submitting assignments, student submit their assignment anytime and it could result to missing script.
- It is hard to search for the lose assignments because there is no record of who may responsible for taking it.
- The lecturer does not know whether all of his or her student has submits their assignment because there are lots of assignments to be collected.
- Student’s test scores may be entered wrongly when manually done.
- Loss of students records due to misplacement.
- Lack of Data integrity: Due to the manual mode of keeping record, Intruders enjoys ease access to the record, altering the sensitive information.
1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The main aim of this project is to design and implement an online assignment submission management system for Computer Science department, Federal Polytechnic Oko.
The specific objectives to achieve the aim are as follows:
- To develop an online assignment submission management system that will help the student submit their assignment on time and safely.
- To help the lecturer know whether his or her student has submitted their assignment on time as required and find out who does not submit their assignment.
- To save the time wasted with manual means of submitting assignments.
- To ensure data security by restricting access to the program and to the database.
- To provide a reliable solution to assignment submission that is error free.
- To provide software that will keep accurate record of number of submitted assignment.
- Significance of the Study
The significance and benefit of this research work is to put an end to the above stated problems. This new system will benefit immensely from the features the platform will offer, which includes; the new system will provide a reliable solution to assignment submission that is error free, it will help the lecturer know whether his or her student has submitted their assignment on time as required, it will help the student submit their assignment on time and safely and also make data recovery stress-free, and finally it will ginger further study and research on the topic by other students and academicians. Hence, the need for computerization of assignment submission management system cannot be over emphasized.
1.5 Scope of the Study
The scope of this study is limited to designing an online assignment submission management system for Computer Science department, Federal Polytechnic Oko, which will serve as a central repository for Computer science department. The system will collect the assignment. The operator will pass all of the assignment to the lecturers to be marked. After the lecturers finish marking them, they passed the assignment back to the operator at the system administrator. The collection of the assignment will be kept at the administrator. The student can collect their assignment from the operator at the administrator.
1.6 Limitations of Study
In the course of carrying out this research work a number of problems were encountered.
- Lack of adequate fund to finance the project: this was another limitation to this work because much money is needed to carry out a detailed research work which is not easily borne by every student.
- The limited knowledge of Visual Basic programming was great challenge to this project. However, more research was made to complete this project successfully.
- Time Constraints: Looking at the interval between the resumption of the final semester, the time given is too short for collection of required information and a more comprehensive fact finding for a better work would have been done if given enough time.
1.7 Definition of Terms
Assignment: a task or piece of work allocated to someone as part of a job or course of study
Computer: Computer is an electronic device operating the control of instructions stored in its memory that can accept data (input) manipulate the data according to a specified rules (processing) produces result output and stores the result for future use.
Data processing: It is defined as the entire process of converting or manipulating data into definite meaningful information (Adigwe, & Okoye, 2015).
Data Security: Data security prevents unauthorized users from viewing or updating the database by the use of passwords.
Data: This is the collections of vital information that meant to be processed.
Database Management System (DBMS): It is software which controls the flow of data and checks and checks on how data are stored.
Database: This is an organized /unique collection of related files. It is a collection of schemas, tables, queries, reports, views and other object.
Design: This is the art or process of designing how something will look, work.
Documentation: material that provides official information or evidence that serves as record; written specifications and information that describes the product.
Information: This is a processed data that can be read and understand.
Lecturer: A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teaches people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher.
Management: It is an act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. It includes planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization or a system to accomplish a goal.
Management: This is an academic discipline, a social science whose objective is to study organization and organizational leadership.
Online: indicates a state of connectivity.
Security: It is protection from allowing an unauthorized users from accessing certain data within the database, it protects your data/ files.
Software: is a program or a set of programs written to carry out some task in the computer, it also perform logical related programs that works together to control the hardware.
Student: A student or pupil is a learner or someone who attends an educational institution.
Submission: The action of presenting a proposal, application, or other document for consideration or judgment.
System: It is the collection of hardware and software, data information procedure and people.
Web-Based: Any program that is accessed over a network connection using HTTP rather than existing within a device’s memory.
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