1.1 Introduction
Web Based Course Registration System is vital recurrent procedures and processes in every tertiary institution system that is inevitable. It is the university’s tradition to carry out these processes every first semester of every session, where each student is to know he/her performance in each of the course offered. These important processes provide the vital performance of student’s in each level in the university system. The aim of computer programming is to put these data files and documents in an interactive manner in a computer system. This will enhance valuable handling and processing of data, leading to improved management decision making. As most nations of the world are becoming information technology inclined, Nigeria is not left behind. Even as most organizations and companies in the foreign countries have implemented information technology in their films, likewise most of Nigeria’s organizations and companies have also enjoyed the benefits of information technology.
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
Web Based Course Registration System is a set of software programs that is designed to control the institution, storage, management, and retrieval of data (RESULT) in a database. Course Registration is categorized according to their data structures or types. The Course Registration System accepts requests for data from an application program and instructs the operating system to transfer the appropriate data. The queries and responses must be submitted and received according to a format that conforms to one or more applicable protocols. Use of manual imputation of result is discarded and new categories of data can be added to the database so easily without disruption to the existing system.
The challenges encountered that led to the execution of the research work is that, the existing system problem has been delaying or delayed the results of graduating or graduated students that has made some of them not to go for youth service when they ought to or ought to have gone and has even made some not to have gone at all. To bridge this gap or solve this problem, there is a need to develop software that is accurate, error free as the problem has imposed so much stress on both exams and record and the management in Universities.
A database management system provides the ability for many different users to share data and process resources. But as there can be many different users, there are many different database needs. This brings about the use of computer-based Web Based Course Registration System. Before the database management approach, the institution relied on the manual method of data processing and storage. Each file was specialized to be used with a specific application. Needless to say, file processing was bulky, costly and nonflexible when it came to supplying needed data accurately and promptly. This study therefore, examines clearly the effect of the computer-based Web Based Course Registration System towards the development of Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO).
1.3 Statement of Problem
Investigation revealed the problems of the existing Web Based Course Registration System which entails that:
- There is problem of proper registration of courses going by the laid down rules.
- Students registering of course onside the option in which the study.
- Students omitting carry over/reference course during result compilation.
- Students offering more/less credit load than required.
- Lack of adequate guidance in course registration.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement a Web Based Course Registration System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Keep track of all the records needed to computer student’s results for online registration of courses;
- Restrict registration of courses based on the mistake of registering the wrong course;
- Eliminate the problem of switching students’ semester results;
- Avoid tampering of results by unauthorized user; and
- Reduce the possibility of making error or mistakes during the result grading and computing.
1.5 Significance of Study
The project work will help in a good number of ways to ease the delay in manual registration of courses. The software developed will help schools management to achieve efficient information management system. There are many other advantages, and some of them are listed below:
- Database for course registration and examination result is maintained
- References are very fast and delays can be avoided.
- It allows easy access to stored information.
- Help in reducing the costs such as labor, inventory and stationary.
- Generation of accurate results/information on transactions is sure.
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 the Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Design and Implementation of Web Based Course Registration System. The Online Course Registration software will be design to manage the course registration process of only Mathematics and Computer Science Department Students from 100 to 400 level of Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO).
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.