1.1 Introduction
Email and SMS is a mobile technology that allows for sending and receiving text or even binary messages to and from a mobile phone. The relative ease of use of SMS makes it possible for a user to learn how to send SMS easily. Computers with the power of the Internet have succeeded in aiding communication among people. The telephone system, which is the main communication system that was invented several years ago, has undergone a great improvement, so much that today we have fixed wireless phones, mobile phones, and the like. With the rapid development of mobile phones come several services, like the Short Messaging Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), which are readily available and add to the usefulness of mobile phones. SMS in particular is widely used in communication and, more recently, has been leveraged to provide several services like airline ticketing, banking services, and commercial services such as share and sell where subscribers can easily share and/or sell airtime (Mavrakis, 2004).
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, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of the Study
People are living in the era of information revolution, with a lot of devices such as computers and mobile devices sprouting everywhere thereby making it easy for information to be communicated, and the education sector is not left out in this growing development. Computers and mobile phones have become an unavoidable part of our lives. There are a lot of things which we can do with these technologies. With the rapid development of mobile phones come several services like the Short Messaging Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and others, which are readily available and add to the usefulness of mobile phones. The availability of such communication mediums in any institution makes it possible for information to be passed on to students as soon as they are available. Result Alert System is a system that can be used to overcome the limitations most of our institutions of higher learning face in making the examination results and grades available to students. The major advantage this system offers is that students can receive valuable information on the fly, easily and conveniently. SMS and E-mail play a major role in the implementation of this system. SMS and email have become important services today due to their usefulness in conveying information from one place to another in a very fast and easy way (Olusanya and Onazi, 2015).
Alert is a colloquial term used to define a machine-to-person communication that is important and/or time sensitive. An alert contains user-requested content such as a reminder (important), a notification (urgent), and ultimately an alert (important and urgent). Alert messaging or alert notification is the delivery of alerts to recipients.
Alert messaging emerged from the study of Personal Information Management (PIM), the science of discovering how people perform certain tasks to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use information relevant to them. Alert notification is a natural evolution of the concept of RSS which makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner. Alerting makes it possible for people to keep up with the information that matters most to them.
Alerts are typically delivered through a notification system and the most common application of the service is machine-to-person communication. Very basic services provide notification services via email or SMS. More advanced systems (for example AOL) provides users with the choice of selecting a preferred delivery channel such as e-mail, Short Message Service (SMS), instant messaging (IM), via voice through voice portals and more. Novel approaches provide users with the ability to schedule their own alerts (for example Google Calendar). The most sophisticated service providers embrace all capabilities, aggregating a multitude of reminder, notifications and alert, catering the delivery system to the specific context of the content being delivered thus enabling users to create sophisticated scenarios.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
Investigation revealed that there exists the problem of checking examination results through notice boards in anxiety. Although most universities, even those in less developed countries now make examination result available on websites. The level of internet availability in less developed countries is still low and quite expensive. Even in developing countries where most homes have internet access, most universities now provide examination result on their website and this is a very common practices. While website seems to be a very good options in countries where internet is readily available, its impact could be less felt and it can be quite expensive in countries with poor internet access. In such places student will have to pay for internet services to check their grades. Similarly, the privacy that should be upheld with respect to results publishing is not through public display.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement an online student result alert application, which will be highly efficient for the process of retrieving necessary information pertaining to every relevant notification about the student results. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Implement a SMS result alert application system, which is user friendly and can provide up to date information;
- Enable students to have access to real time information; and
- Provide instant notification about information relating to their result via SMS;
- Provide students with the ability to check their result without having any cause to visit any notice board.
1.5 Significance of the Study
The study is significant has it helps to integrate modern day technology to the university system. It gives and improves key indications on developing an electronic information system.
The project is quite significant in its nature because of the various advantages mobile technology poses; in the design of the system it keeps student abreast of instant notification about their results and other relevant information.
1.6 Scope of the Study
The scope of this research focuses on the design and implementation of an online student result alert system through SMS or Email. This research will cover only the department of Computer Science in Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun State.
1.7 Limitation of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- 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.
- 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.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- 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
SMS: It stands for Short Message Service and is also commonly referred/called to as text message. With SMS, you can send a message of up to 160 characters to another device.
MMS: It stands for Multimedia Messaging service and this type of text messaging is an evolution of the SMS. With a MMS, you can send message in including pictures,. Video, or audio content to another device.
Alert: It is a notification that a threshold has been reached.
Email: It is a message that contain text, files, images, or other attachments sent through a network to a specified individual or group individuals.
