1.1 Introduction
The Electronic Accreditation for Tertiary Institution is a system that allows the establishment or re-statement of the status, legitimacy or appropriateness of an institution, programme or module of study. The uses methods and has purposes that overlap with audit, assessment and external examining. Before exploring these issues, some orientation on what accreditation is and how it relates to other external processes. Institutional accreditation effectively provides a license to operate. It is usually based on an evaluation of whether the institution meets specified minimum (input) standards such as staff qualifications, research activities, student intake and learning resources. It might also be based on an estimation of the potential for the institution to produce graduates that meet explicit or implicit academic standard or professional competence. As such, accreditation becomes process-dominated and tending towards what can be documented as high quality rather than quality itself (Engebretsen et al., 2012).
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 Study
In this regard, accreditation is asserted an effective way to assess and improve the quality of education (Sun et al., 2007). Education system forms the backbone of every nation. And hence it is important to provide a strong educational foundation to the young generation to ensure the development of open-minded global citizens securing the future for everyone. Advanced technology available today can play a crucial role in streamlining education-related processes to promote solidarity among students, teachers, parents and the school staff.
Electronic Accreditation System for Tertiary Institution consists of tasks such as registering students, attendance record keeping, controlling absentees, producing report cards, producing official transcript, preparing timetable and producing different reports for teachers, parents, officials from other stakeholders. Accreditation necessitates extensive preparation which involves gathering information pertinent to the required standards that are utilized to analyze how well- prepared the institution is to address whatever inquiries and issues may arise.
Academic program accreditation, for example, is emphasized as an effective quality assurance mechanism that could serve a broad range of constituencies from the perspective of the profession and society. The growing interest in a sustainable improvement in the academic programs, and not just in meeting the minimal educational requirements, is a current positive trend that will help to guarantee successful educational systems. Accreditation should ultimately contribute to assure that graduates will have the knowledge and skills required to practice the profession successfully and to be of service to their societies (Darandari et al., 2011).
Accreditation is seen as one way in which colleges and universities could raise the bar of quality in teaching and learning and keep themselves in check with the set standards. This involves investing in a substantial amount of resources to enhance the competence of its faculty, increase research productivity, and improve facilities. The process of accreditation seeks to declare publicly that a product, process or service conforms to the requirements. The areas of activity of an engineer can be classified according to the type of company where you work or service function to develop.
During the accreditation process, all the standards are required to be addressed at several levels of detail. In specific, each standard is broken down into a number of sub-standards dealing with the requirements within each of its major areas. For example, the learning and teaching standard could be divided into a number of sub-standards that address the learning outcomes; students’ learning and assessment; and quality of teaching. To be accredited, institutions have to provide a list of the good practices that are carried out within each of the sub-standards supported with sufficient evidences on the implementation of these practices.
Education is central to development. It is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality and lays a foundation for sustained economic growth. With this aim currently our government has given special emphasis to the educational sector and school improvement activities such as continuous professional development for teachers, training and upgrading teachers and capacitating schools with manpower and materials are among the major actions which have been taken in both primary and secondary schools. In order to facilitate and simplify these actions one of the major tool is to have automated Electronic Accreditation System for Tertiary Institution.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
Investigation revealed that several problems exist in the current practices of data gathering and formulating reports for the accreditation process, such as, redundancy, decentralization of information, lack of expertise, the inherent difficulty in reaching the quality assurance personals, conflicting feedbacks, and insufficiency of time allocated for data gathering and writing reports. These concerns represent real challenges and issues and required an intelligent tool to replace the tedious labor and streamline the whole process. Also, accreditation mechanisms and procedures cannot be understood and followed through the inaccurate guidance provided to populate the reports and forms.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement an Electronic Accreditation System for Tertiary Institution using National University Commission as a case study. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Provide user friendly interface for National University Commission to effectively manage resources of accredited tertiary institution;
- Facilitate accurate report generation and record keeping of accredited tertiary institutions;
- Provide a secured electronic accreditation system for registration and accrediting new tertiary institution;
- Keep track of accredited tertiary institution information such as date of license and registration; and
- Allow principals and Education bureau officials to view reports of accredited tertiary institution.
1.5 Significance of Study
The use of Electronic Accreditation System for Tertiary Institution has the significance effect and this can be enumerated as follows:
- To assist the National University Commission management for easily identification of accredited tertiary institution.
- To create a storage of large volume of data on accredited tertiary institutions records.
This study will be of immense benefit to 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 scope of this research is focused on the Electronic Accreditation System for Tertiary Institution using National University Commission as a case study.
1.7 Limitations 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
Accreditation: It is the establishment or re-statement of the status, legitimacy or appropriateness of an institution, programme or module of study.
