Design and Implementation of University SMS Result Dissemination

1.1 Introduction

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, Limitation 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.

SMS result dissemination 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 play a major role in the implementation of this system. SMS 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).

Till today, especially in the developing countries like Nigeria, there still exists the problem of checking examination results as students throng to notice boards in anxiety, although most universities, even those in the less developed countries, now make examination results available on their websites. The level of Internet availability in less developed countries is still low and quite expensive. Even in the developed countries, where most homes have Internet access, SMS is still a faster and cheaper means of disseminating examination results as well as other information.

Pramsane and Sanjaya (2006) stated that universities and polytechnics could provide educational services based on SMS, such as grade release, enrollment information, university announcement, and internship opportunity. An advantage SMS offers is that students can receive valuable information on the fly without requesting it. More than 160 billion SMSs are exchanged each month in European countries (Mavrakis, 2004), and according to Resource Shelf (2006), 48.7 billion SMS messages were sent in the second half of 2005, which is up 50% from the six months before that. The major advantage of SMS is its cost effectiveness and availability, as most individuals own a phone.

The result checking system not only allows student to request grades, it provides the result as soon as they as become available. This is done by pushing the result to the students (sending it to their phones) or working on a request sent from a student to produce the result (pulling). There are two methods of SMS widely used in applications; they are the PUSH & PULL. This application can either be used to push or pull messages.

A Push SMS application is one whereby a message is sent from the application to the user. It is a one-way message. In other words, it is the mobile application (in this case, the SMS result checking application) that initiates a message. An example could be a school that automatically sends examination results to the students and their parents/sponsors as soon as the grades become available. The users do not request the grades, do not take any action, and are not charged for receiving the SMS. The SMS would be delivered to them in a matter of seconds regardless of where they are, as long as their mobile phone is within their network operator's coverage.

A Pull SMS application, on the other hand, is one whereby a user sends a request and obtains a reply from the application. This is a full duplex scenario. An example is when a student requests for his/her grades for a recently concluded semester. The proposed system offers both the PULL and PUSH functionality making it even more efficient and easier for speculating and anxious students.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

Investigation revealed that due to the lack of proper mode of result dissemination in Nigerian universities students are facing challenges viewing their results after examination. They have to come to school and struggle in the notice board to view a result which is eventually torn or gets missing, making the students that are not there on time to start looking for their results. Although most universities have online portals from which the students can check their result from, but considering the extremely slow and costly internet access can be a discouraging factor for student using this medium.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the study is to design and implement a University SMS Result Dissemination System that 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:

1. Send and receive SMS from all kind of phones from all networks;
2. Notify users when they make an invalid request;
3. Provide more flexibility, by allowing many result checking options;
4. Be relatively ease customization; and
5. Functions 24hrs a day, removing the restrictions as to when students can check result.

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 University SMS Result Dissemination using Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun State as a case study.

1.7 Limitation 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

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.

HTML CODE: HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a type of computer language that is primarily used for files that are posted on the internet and viewed by web browsers. HTML files can also be sent via email.

Push Notification: A push notification is a message that pops up on a mobile device. App publishers can send them at any time; users don’t have to be in the app or using their devices to receive them.