CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION
There were three fundamentally distinct education systems in Nigeria
in 1990: the indigenous system, Quran schools, and formal European-style
education institutions. In the rural areas where the majority lived,
children learned the skills of farming and other work, as well as the
duties of adulthood, from participation in the community. This process
was often supplemented by age-based schools in which groups of young
boys were instructed in community responsibilities by mature men. By the
1970s, education experts were asking how the system could be integrated
into the more formal schooling of the young, but the question remained
unresolved by 1990. Western-style education came to Nigeria with the
missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century. Although the first mission
school was founded in 1843 by Methodists, it was the Anglican Church
Missionary Society that pushed forward in the early 1850s to found a
chain of missions and schools, followed quickly in the late 1850s by the
Roman Catholics. In 1887 in what is now southern Nigeria, an education
department was founded that began setting curricula requirements and
administered grants to the mission societies. By 1914, when north and
south were united into one colony, there were fifty-nine government and
ninety-one mission primary schools in the south; all eleven secondary
schools, except for King's College in Lagos, were run by the missions.
The education system focused strongly on examinations. In 1916
Frederick Lugard, first governor of the unified colony, set up a school
inspectorate. Discipline, buildings, and adequacy of teaching staff were
to be inspected, but the most points given to a school's performance
went to the numbers and rankings of its examination results. This stress
on examinations was still used in 1990 to judge educational results and
to obtain qualifications for jobs in government and the private sector.
As more information is made available in a variety of formats and
media and in a variety of locations, the need to manage information/data
efficiently becomes more and more critical. Both staff and public users
want access to stored information and want to access it more
efficiently. It is the University Policy to improve both the efficiency
and effectiveness of course registration and result processing
operations and services through the implementation of an integrated
automated database System.
1.2 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Caritas University is made up of four (4) faculties namely:
1. Engineering with the following departments: Computer, Mechanical, Chemical and Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
2. Environmental with the following departments: Architecture, Urban & Regional Planning and Estate Management.
3. Management and Social Sciences with the following departments:
Accountancy, Economics, Business Administration, Public Administration,
Political Science, Industrial Relation and Personnel Management, Mass
Communication, Marketing, Banking and Finance.
4. Natural Sciences with the following departments: Biochemistry,
Computer Science & Information Technology, Industrial Chemistry,
Mathematics & Statistics and Microbiology & Biotechnology.
In Universities like Caritas, the need for automated method of
keeping data has been there. Software, so many of them has been
developed and even sold worldwide to solve this problem. I have analyzed
these software and discovered that very many of them are inefficient.
Students as well has researched and developed their own software but
they could not give or develop error free software that will assist in
result generation, automated course registration to keep or build a
database of results in the University that will facilitate students’
transcripts.
This 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.
Organizational Structure
Fig. 1.1 Organization Structure
1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Database of information is vital in today’s education with respect to
course registration and examination result processing. This has become a
very vital issue as students spend so much time trying to know the
number of credit units for each semester. This problem has lead to time
wasting, inaccuracy of results and even open to fraud. Cases of missing
results have been recorded thereby making examination processing more
difficult and untimely.
1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The objectives of this study are to:
1. Provide a reliable solution to result processing that is corruption free.
2. Ensure that normal credit load in line with the school is maintained.
3. Provide a software that will generate result that is accurate, timely and error free.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The project work will help in a good number of ways to ease the delay
in manual examination processing. 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.
1. It saves time during examination processing
2. Database for course registration and examination result is maintained
3. References are very fast and delays can be avoided.
4. It allows easy access to stored information.
5. Help in reducing the costs such as labor, inventory and stationary.
6. Generation of accurate results/information on transactions is sure.
1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This research work will concentrate on course registration and
examination processing system using Caritas University (Computer Science
& Information Technology Department) as a case study. The system
developed will only cover registration of students, course registration
and result processing
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS/VARIABLES
Information System: It is a collection of procedures, people,
Instructions and equipment to produce information in a useful form.
Technology: It is study of techniques or process of mobilizing
Resource (such as information) for accomplishing objectives that
benefits man and his environment.
Information: Information can be defined as the process of
gathering, transmitting, receiving, storing and retrieving data or
several items put together to convey a desired message.
Computer Network: Computer Network is a system that connects two or more computers together using a communication link.
Databases: A systematically arranged collection of computer data,
structured so that it can be automatically retrieved or manipulated. It
is also called databank.
File Transfer: Any kind of computer file can be sent via the
Internet from one Internet user to another. Table of accounts on
spreadsheets, design by a graphic artists, music sound files etc, can
all be exchanged in this way.