Design And Development Of A Web-Based Student Academic Advising System

Computer Science Project Material with Source Code Included

Abstract

Student academic advising is very important for the development of wards in different institutions but always a time-consuming effort in academic life. A Web-based Academic advising system has been implemented in order to solve the issues between students and the academic advisers, by making advising more convenient, take complaint from students, evaluate and generate reports, suggest possible answers which is different from the manual way of giving student advise to an automated way. This researcher surveyed the existing procedures; as utilized by many institutions and then implemented a computerized solutions in order to enhance their overall advising experience. The paper presents an outline of the design and implementation of a computerized e-Academic Advising System as a web-based application. The proposed system attempts to build a model that the staff and counsel can access to follow-up the student complaints and suggestions. Also, the students can register academic complaints, seek advice and more. The e-Academic advising web-based system is developed and implemented with HTML, CSS and “PHP” as a Web framework which runs via the structured query language, “SQL” as a Database Engine.

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Academic advising or counseling is said to be key to student success and academic achievements. The present academic advising method vary considerably and little is known about it productivity and effectiveness. These days, with the increase in poor academic performance by students in the current educational environment, strong academic advising system is an essential ingredient to improve students’ academy success, support the present advice system aimed at productive and efficient learning. Academic advising is an important key and activity of an academic institution. It provides guidelines and counsel to students to explore future careers paths, academic disciplines and other challenges accompanied with peer pressure. An automated, accurate and full functional advising system can be an effective tool for both students and academic advisors. The complex nature of academic syllabus, especially with recent changes in academic to general education and other degree requirements, this challenges poses a continuous challenge to faculty advisors to remain up-to-date. Academic counselling plays a vital role in creating an enabling educational environment for academic institution students. Furthermore, faculty advisers find it difficult cause the process is time consuming for academic advisors especially with the dynamic nature of combing other school activities with counselling. Despite these challenges, academic counsellors always try their very best to offer accurate, up-to-date and consistent advising information to their students.

Therefore, with the advancement in technology, there is a need to improve the educational counseling system, surely there is a need to advance even faster than the manual procedure. Since it affects a large percentage of students from different academic disciple. With the computerized system, they would be a great improvement in student academic performance, as the system will acts as a bridge to help bring better information to students and improve academic skill.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The Current method of giving counsel to students entails a lot of paper work and documentation, which sometimes leads to loss or damage, this traditional method depend greatly on the effort of the advisers to find the best counsel and suggestions to improve students’ academic performance. In institutions with large amount of students, academic advising is time-consuming and the only means to improve the way counsel is given to students is to implement an automated system that will make the process successfully and efficient.

There is a need for a computerized system that can give advice and offers immediate counselling to a large number of students at the same time, anytime any day. In the research, we outline a smart system, the system will assist students in improving their academic performance by giving academic advice relating to courses, students’ personal issues that meet their current needs and overall improve their academic performance.

1.3 Aim and Purpose of the Study

The primary aim of the study is to design an automated system that will offer Student Academic Advice, with the following objectives:

Provide an automated student academic counseling system for schools, to ease the work load on school student advisers.
Provide real time counsel and advice to students anywhere, any time.
Help in the fight against students’ poor academic performance.
Store students’ complaint for easy retrieval.
Protect submitted entries from unauthorized personnel.
Design a secured system against theft or loss of vital information.

1.4 Scope of the Study

The scope of the research is focused on designing an automated secured student academic ADVISING SYSTEM for tertiary institutions, when fully implemented, the system will solve the challenges of students’ record keeping, tracking complaints, reports and generally improve students’ general welfare.

1.5 Definition of Terms

Student: A student is primarily a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution who attends classes in a course to attain the appropriate level of mastery.

Automated:

Operated electronically, that functions automatically, without continuous input from an operator.

Adviser:

An adviser or advisor is normally a person with more and deeper knowledge in a specific area.

Academic:

Relating to education or school.

Complaint:

Express dissatisfaction or annoyance about something.

Computerized:

To control, perform, process, or store (a system, operation, or information) by means of or in an electronic computer or computers.

Chapter Five

Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

5.0 Introduction

Here in this chapter, the reports, descriptions and findings made in the preceding chapters are summarized here, along with recommendations for effectiveness and efficiency, and limitations faced in implementing the research project.

5.1 Summary

A student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM is aside from being feasible, more advantageous than the traditional method of storing records. Because it can be run on the university’s intranet, one does not have to be at the storage servers to access stored records.

The developed Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM supports multi-user access, securely stores records, and performs automatic computations, thus addressing several issues encountered in using the traditional filing system: security issues, slow record retrieval, manual computation, etc. among others.

The aforementioned features of the system makes it robust, flexible and can be integrated with another Database Management System, if the need arises. Various software development methodologies were also reviewed, and the desired one implemented.

5.2 Conclusion

From this research proposal, the introduction of Information Technology has made basic educational activities easier, faster and more secure. A Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM, as opposed to the traditional method of storing records, will facilitate ease and orderliness in the university system.

Students will be more wont to carry out the course registration process because it’ll be made easier by the developed Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM. Results will not be made available for public consumption, but rather seen only by the particular student to whom it belongs to; this also applies to information intended only for authorized access, thus implementing confidentiality, availability and data integrity on records.

5.3 Limitations

The following limitations prevent the Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM from reaching its full potential:

The System only functions on the Windows® desktop platform, hence users of the mobile platform (Android and iOS) and other Operating Systems (Mac OS and Linux flavours) would not be able to access the System.
The System was not implemented as a web application, so it can only be accessed on the university’s intranet within the campus, not on the internet. Users not within the campus premises cannot hence have access to the System.
Due to financial restrictions, a physical server was unavailable for use for testing the application before presentation. For this purpose, a localized network between PCs was used.

5.4 Recommendation

Based on findings of the study, the following recommendations are suggested for consideration:

The university should replace the traditional filing system with the developed computerised Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM.
The university should set up a wider range intra-network than the one in place now, one accessible from anywhere within the campus with which the System can be accessed. Wi-Fi repeaters, in conjunction with the installed network routers and switches, may be used to enable this function.
A unique team of staff with the necessary skillset should be employed by the university to manage the Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM, among which is the System Administrator.
Since the Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM is built on the Windows® desktop platform, the E-Library at the school and the computer systems in it should be made available for students without their own PCs to access the System.
24/7 power should be made available to power up the servers, as well as the network devices in use. This can be implemented with the provision of a backup generator that starts up in the event of a power failure.
The Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM should be studied more to improve it, maintain and debug the system in the event of issues coming up.

5.5 Suggestions for Further Research

The developed Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM can be further studied and researched to either integrate it with other applications, such as a Hospital/Clinic Management System, or a System for managing school fees paid by students; or to develop the aforementioned as subsystems to the Student Academic ADVISING SYSTEM, thus broadening the scope of the project.

It can also be upgraded to a different platform, making use of only the stored data in the database, as well as its structure, in order to improve security, ease of use, or functionality.

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