Software Implementation of an Online Assignment Submission Management System

1.1 Introduction

Submitting your work with the Assignment tool in Blackboard allows you to easily upload your homework files to your instructor and receive files back, along with your grade. There is no need for paper or even email. When an assignment is created, the Submission Type section allows you to define and/or limit how the assignment can be submitted.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitation of the study and Definition of technical terms.

1.2 Background of 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 (1998) 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, 2003). 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.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

Investigation revealed that many reported failures in courses thought in the tertiary institutions can be attributed to the careless of the course representative or the teaching assistant who failed to submit an assignment paper to the lecturer for marking (Jones, 2003). Such careless could lead to a zero mark for the victim whose paper was declared missing or simply not found. The manual method of submitting assignments to the course lecturer or directly to the lecturer in most Nigerian Universities is simply not effective as these papers could get damaged or get missing due to the carelessness of the course representative or the lecturer.

Moreover, assignments that are large in terms of pages or volume could easily discourage a student from submitting due to financial constraints brought about by high cost of printing an assignment. All these problems highlighted are the main reasons the researcher is developing an electronic assignment submission system to curtail these challenges and make studying more enjoyable in our tertiary institutions.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The main aim of the study is to design and implement an online assignment submission system. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To develop a system for proper documentation of students’ record in the in the school system.
2. To create a database that will manage each student assignment submission and allow access by lecturer to access those files submitted by the student.
3. To Create a quick search and advance search that the student / lecturer when sorting a file.
4. This proposed system is geared towards providing a system to assure equal opportunity and impartial review of student assignment submission
5. The system to be developed will provide a full school system by that will take cares of faculty registration, lecturer registration, course registration, department registration, users registration, student registration, perform scores /grades registration, test scores assessment and article entry.

1.5 Significance of Study

This study will be of immense benefit to Students, Lecturers and other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.

1.6 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Design and Implementation of an Online Assignment Submission Management System.

1.7 Limitations of the study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).

1.8 Definition of Terms

Electronic - (of a device) having or operating with components such as microchips and transistors that control and direct electric currents.

Information – What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.

Login – The act of logging in to a database, mobile device, or computer, especially a multiuser computer or a remote or networked computer system.