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DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT A COMPUTERIZED ACADEMIC PLANNING SYSTEM.

1.1 Background of the Study

Academic planning  in higher education is planning that outlines a college’s or university’s overall academic goals and how those goals will be met. Academic planning identifies long-term and short-term objectives to match the mission of an institution with the needs of learners.

The Academic Planning defines the curriculum of a campus and its potential impact on a variety of learning communities within it.

Academic planning needs to focus on 2 things: one; the need for and shape of education in college or university’s service area and two; the ability of its current resource base to adequately provide for these needs. This process must be objective and the reality of potential changes must be embraced.

Academic planning system prevailing objectives involves matching campus strengths and distinctive competencies to societal needs such a way that the best resources of the campus come into play in supporting existing            services and programs or in creating new ones. It also provides a common language, a collective set of norms and values and a shared vision as to the nature of learning at the institution.

Academic planning in information system is a tremendous means to help management in their daily practices and to improve its quality. Ahaiwe, (2017)

With the national dividing financial budgetary allocation, nature academic planning is essential for proper channeling of our limited resources provisions for lecture rooms and office spaces seen to have been neglected for the previous years. Academics have been in chaos; student admission has been on the increase without regard to available infrastructure.

According to Ahaiwe, (2017) Available classroom spaces have insufficient desks, table and chairs. Partially due to over blown student population, examinations are difficult to conduct and examination script are not yet computerized only in first year and second years. Library facilities need to be coordinated, with all these, a good academic planning which would encompass short, median and long term planning is necessary in the institution. For this purpose, an academic planning unit is one word for proper articulation of academic activities. Therefore, it is hoped that the design and implementation of computerized academic planning unit would provide a flexible and reliable management of IMT, Enugu. Anigbogu, (2016)

The Academic Planning defines the curriculum of a campus and its potential impact on a variety of learning communities within it. A good academic planning which would encompass short, median and long term planning is necessary in the institution. For this purpose, an academic planning unit is in evitable for proper articulation of academic activities. Therefore, it is hoped that the design and implementation of an integrated software suite for academic planning unit would provide a flexible and reliable management of the Institute of management technology (IMT), Enugu campus.

Academic planning needs to focus on 2 things: one; the need for and shape of education in college or university’s service area and two; the ability of its current resource base to adequately provide for these needs. This process must be objective and the reality of potential changes must be embraced.

Academic planning system prevailing objectives involves matching campus strengths and distinctive competencies to societal needs such a way that the best resources of the campus come into play in supporting existing services and programs or in creating new ones. It also provides a common language, a collective set of norms and values and a shared vision as to the nature of learning at the institution.

The planning includes so many things such as:

1. Concentrating on undergraduate education.
2. Maintaining a large and stable set of core courses.

• Focus effort on teaching and services.

1. Challenging students through exposure to new ideas.
2. Conduct student enrolment according to NBTE requirement etc.

This process should be led by the office of Academic Affairs, it is also important to include other members of the campus community in the process such as the department chairs, deans and academic vice chancellor otherwise known as Directorate academic planning unit in this IMT.

The importance of academic planning describes a model-based decision support system for academic units in a university headachy. This system integrates macro level decision by examining individual department budgets to determine future plans quantitative technique for forecast.

What motivated or propelled me to write this project is because of so many reasons; firstly, delay in processing students information and this leads to delay in the given out admission to student and also issuing of statement of results, all records stored in files and documents could be physically damaged or lost due, and finally, unauthorized records access that is no restriction to the database.

Nevertheless, the adopted project was able to achieve some aims which includes; creating a database for the school management, specifically for the model adopted in this project, developing a software that will keep proper record of staff and students and also provide/set standard learning facilities for effective and standard education for students. Nevertheless, some of the challenges includes; delay in result processing, too much of time consumption in doing a single task, loss of student’s records due to misplacement of data and duplication of files as result of inappropriate sorting of files, delay in graduating students is also included as one of the challenges too.

The existing system used in this renders it inefficient and therefore reduces the quality of education being rendered on students. But the computerized approach has been adopted to reduce that inefficiency by storing the students enrolled in the database and get the number of students enrolled from it. When this computerized approach is adopted, it enhances getting all the number of female/male students in the school faster, more accurately and reliably, thereby increasing the standard of education because it makes plan easier and done in appropriate time

• Statement of the Problems

Some of the problems observed in the existing system are:

1. Higher education is being challenged today perhaps as never been before
2. Secondly, the rapid increase in the number of higher education has posed a lot of challenges to the existing ones and therefore needs to withstand in the competitive and changing world of the academy.
3. The manual system of planning which is still in use has become ineffective leading to poor performance of academy due to number of educational student has outgrown already planned facilities such as classroom, lecturers, library and equipment for teaching/learning and also on the other side of the management.
4. Time wastage: a lot of times are usually wasted using manual means to process students. The more the number of students, the more time it takes.
5. Duplication of effort: using manual means, some activities are carried out repeatedly which is a waste of time and effort.

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this study is to design and implement a computerized academic planning system. The objectives are;

1. To create a database for the school management.
2. To develop software that will keep proper staff and student record.
3. To provide a capable management system to hold the data of all enrolled students effectively with easy access/modification and to maintain the number of student enrolment according to NBTE requirement.
4. To reduce the time spent in result processing for the students
5. To facilitate the registration and admission process.

• Significance of the Study

The significance of this study is to enhance the performance of the school academy and make them withstand the competitive nature of their works by making works easier and faster for workers, producing an accurate and reliable result and eliminate redundancy in the student database.

This is aimed at improving the registration and admission process of Institute of management and technology,

• It helps the school to organize and know the amount of student to admit every section.
• It helps the student know their course and time table of every lecturer in the school.
• It helps anyone that is not familiar with the school policy to learn and operate with the school rules as an individual.
• It is a computerized project that was design to makes it easy and user friendly for everyone to use as an individual or a group.

Scope of the Study

Academic planning system project can be applied in tertiary institution e.g. university, polytechnic and college of education. for this course, the work is limited only to provision of a standard computer based database for student and for easy access/maintenance.

1.6 Limitations of Study

In the course of carrying out this research work a number of problems were encountered.

1. Lack of adequate fund to finance the project: this was another limitation to this work because much money is needed to carry out a detailed research work which is not easily borne by every student.
2. Power Routine: The source and authority of Electric power supply Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) is another limitation of this project. Some typed work was lost due to the power interruption and had to be retyped.

• Time Constraints: Looking at the interval between the resumption of the final semester, the time given is too short for collection of required information and a more comprehensive fact finding for a better work would have been done if given enough time.

1. The limited knowledge of Visual Basic programming was great challenge to this project. However, more research was made to complete this project successfully.

1.7 Definition of Terms

Academic Planning: This is to provide direction and approval for matters related to the academic direction of the university. This includes facilitating the development of academic program encouraging innovation in their design.

Admission Requirements: This is the minimum prerequisite a school sets for a candidate which he has to meet in order to be registered into an institution.

Admission: This is an act of accepting a series of qualified students or candidates into departments of their choices provided they complete the school requirements.

Analyst: This is a person or professional who studies the problem encountered by a system and creates means of solving them by introducing a better system.

CGPA = Total Grade Point Divided by Total Number of Course Credit hour.

Code: It is a written guideline that helps to determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical.

Computer: Computer is an electronic device operating the control of instructions stored in its memory that can accept data (input) manipulate the data according to a specified rules (processing) produces result output and stores the result for future use.

Cumulative Grade Point Average: –this is the measure of the student’s overall academic performance at any given time in his academic program. It is normally calculated at the end of the session. It is calculated thus:

Data processing: this is defined as the entire process of converting or manipulating data into definite meaningful information (Adigwe, & Okoye, 2018).

Data: It is the facts collected for decision making they are facts that are kept to be processed to get more information.

Database Management System: it is software which controls the flow of data and checks and checks on how data are stored.

Database: is an organized /unique collection of related files. It is a collection of schemas, tables, queries, reports, views and other object.

Design: is the art or process of designing how something will look, work.

Documentation: material that provides official information or evidence that serves as record; written specifications and information that describes the product.

Electronic Data Processing Equipment: it is a machine that performs the work of data manipulation.

Final Cumulative Grade Point Average: This is the measure of the student’s over all academic performance at the end of her academic program.

Grade Point: This is the corresponding point 0.00-4.00 of the grade letters F-A respectively.

Grade Point Average: This is the point in which the academic performance of a student is measured at the end of every semester. It has the maximum value of 4.00 and minimum value of 0.00. It can be calculated thus: GPA= Total Grade Point Divided by Total Number of Course Credit hour

Information: is a processed data that can be read and understand.

Management Information System:     Information system that generates accurate timely and organized information so that manager and other user can make decision, solve problem supervise activities and track progress.

Registration: This is the process of supplying peculiar information of a student to the school in order to be given a registration number as a bonafide student.

Security: This helps to prevent unauthorized users from illegally accessing certain data within the database, it protects your data/ files.

Software: These are set of logically related instructions given to the computer to perform some specific task.

Software: These are set of logically related instructions given to the computer to perform some specific task.

Statement of Result: This obtains the final cumulative grade point average and the class of degree of a student. It is normally issued at the end of one’s academic program.

Students Examination Result: an official record of students’ information that shows the courses he/she offered with the result of the examination.

System: Is the collection of hardware and software, data information procedure and people.