1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Tutoring application has only been available in recent times and few working in mathematics education today would be unaware of the growth in recent years of computer technologies for teaching, learning and research in mathematics. Calculating technology in mathematics has evolved from four function calculators to scientific calculators to graphing calculators and now to computers with computer algebra software. The use of mathematical library or mathematical software in schools is still rare and since it is difficult for teachers to go beyond the prescribed textbook, the school public library teachings may leave gaps and doubts.
As school activities expands, there have been a lot of task facing the teacher of a class. These tasks (Bertemes, 2016) include taking attendance of the students, teaching the students their class works, among others, hence the need for a tutoring application. A tutoring application that serves as a teaching assistant for the teacher is an application where books are kept, electronically in form of PDFs, Texts or Docs or any readable formats, where videos are stored, source of reference for related courses and mini-dictionary where technical words are stored for easy access and assess. It is a repository of knowledge, houses collections of books, videos and educational games (in form of quiz) and the likes.
Consequently, truth and knowledge can be found and acquired from the application through the aforementioned sources. The information contents (Jo, 2016) of any of collections can be recorded on microfilms, audiotapes, microchips and other materials traditionally kept in a library, which is charged with the responsibility of acquiring, organizing, maintaining, and judicial circulation of the books and other academic materials through the various sections of the application, for efficient use by the users.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS
The need for a mathematical tutoring application in God saves schools is because of the school operates a single non-computerized library system. Based on this, a number of problems face the existence and operation of the computerized mathematical library systems and the students being limited to their school textbooks alone for source of knowledge. Hence, the need for a separate mathematical library and making it, computerized, where the tutoring application can be easily integrated.
1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The aim of the system is to design a tutoring application for secondary schools using God saves schools as a case study.
In this study therefore, the researchers hope to accomplish the following objectives:
1.4 METHODOLOGY
In this research work, Microsoft Visual C# and Microsoft Office Access are used as design methodologies. This is because of their basic advantage over other models or methods; which is their simplicity in nature.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This study, tutoring application for secondary school students is designed to bring efficiency in the mathematical library system operations and to provide access to students in getting almost all they need for studies. It will eliminate some of the problems of students being limited to the teachings they get from teachers and textbooks, thereby widening their source of getting information for reading and tutoring materials.
1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This project looks into the processes involved in keeping tracks of the readable materials. The software will be divided into modules containing selected mathematical topics (indices, surds, completing the square, factorization and quadratic formula), mathematical dictionary containing 300 mathematical terms, a list of mathematical 250 mathematical formulae, which are grouped into 3 different sections and an assessment after each lesson.
1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This study will not look in detail of all topics done in secondary school. It will be limited to fiveselected mathematics topics, which include Indices, Surds, Factorization, Quadratic Formulae and Completing the Square, respectively.
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Design: It is a detail plan or arrangement to achieve a particular purpose.
System: It is an assemblage of interrelated elements, which we find interesting to study. It could be a process, a machine or a program.
Program:A set of instructions and procedures tells the computer what to do.
Application: A program designed to perform particular tasks.
Tutoring: Is an act or the process of giving instruction or teaching.
User: The user here refers to the people who make use of the application.
Automation/Computerization: It is a process of making a system to carry out its processes on its own without much helps from man.
Module: An independent unit that is part of a larger development. It is the same thing as sub-tasks.