We Rank the Best on Research Projects

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A WEB-BASED STUDENTS AUTOMATED GRADE POINT AVERAGE (GPA) CALCULATOR

• Background of study

One of the largest investments in many organizations is the creation, maintenance, and retrieval of information. It hasbeen estimated that in an organization such as a tertiary educational community, information is highly essential forcorrect students’ record and examination data. Student information, if not properly created and stored, will cause many errors in usage Okonigene,  (2008). Nearly every section of the educational system requires informationprocessing. With the use of computers for information processing, the following are possible: instant access tostudents’ personal and course information, instant student information updating, automatic computation of the GradePoint Average (GPA), generation of the graduating students list, monitoring of failed courses, keeping an up-to-daterecord of the entire student body in the institution, storing course information such as course code, coursedescription, course unit, and scores for the purpose of GPA computation, and producing user-friendly data entryscreens for ease of use. It is unfortunate that all educational institutions in the developing world, such as theUniversities, Colleges of Education and polytechnics in Nigeria, still operate under the manual method of recordkeeping and computation of GPA. College of Education Akwanga, Nasarawa State, Nigeria, for example, stilloperates on this manual method which is highly prone to errors.College of Education Akwanga was established by the statutes of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly ascontained in the extra ordinary Gazette 1 October 1996. At its inception, the College operated with five schoolsnamely; school of sciences, school of art and social sciences, school of Languages, school of Vocational andtechnical Education and school of Education. All of which having students enrollment increasing every year, rightfrom the inception of this great institution, students result has been manually processed. The manual systememployed is not very efficient, in that a lot of paper work has to be done which takes a reasonable length of time toprepare. Due to the increasing number of students in each school of the institution, computation of the student’sCGPA has been a very difficult task. Therefore, because of this problems and errors arising from such a system, asoftware-computerized result processing system becomes inevitable; the benefits accruable from the computer-basedsystem cannot be over emphasized.

The effort expended in the process of registration of students and computation of their examination results is awesome. Quite worrisome is the fact that these processes are carried out every academic session, putting the operators in a continuous and ever demanding cycle. The computation of examination results and registration of students is obviously an object-centered activity, the student being the dominant object in this case. Hence, the need to evolve a computerized process that will effectively and efficiently capture all the important data associated with the registration and examination result processing within the University and the interactions among the objects.

Students’ Examination Result is the summary of each of the semester or four years performance in a degree program for ABRAHAM ADESANYA POLYTECHIC to be terminable. A students’ Result is also demanded by a student who has finished ND and wishes to transfer to another school or student who wishes to get a job.A Transcript is not given directly to a student. It is sent to the school that the student wishes to be transferred, or to the organization or establishment that requires the result.

A students’ Result is prepared or formed by the scores entered on the designed score sheet by the individual subject lecturers on semester examinations. This genuine and noble desire necessitated the design and development of the Undergraduate Registration and Examination Processing System software.

1.2 Aim and objectives

The aim of the project emphasizes on developing a comprehensive implementable web-base software or program to automate the grading system of GPA for easy access processing and reliable information of student result. The specific objectives are:

1. To facilitate the accessing time of student result
2. To enhance speedy of the results.
3. To eliminate error due to manual processing.
4. To provide security measure to check student mischievous act of changing marks on the result sheet.

1.3Scope of the project

The scope (or delimitation of study) falls under the process of degree of extension, Specifically in ABRAHAM ADESANYA POLYTECHIC their grade begins with Distinctions, upper credit, lower credit, pass, fail………….where Distinction stands for 3.50 and above

Upper credit stands for 3.00-3.49

Lower credit stands for 2.50-2.99

Pass stands for 2.00-2.49

Fail stands for 0.00-1.99

1.4 Limitation/constraints

The constraints that were highly against this study are: Financial predicament and inconsistency in the economic background of the institute. Also lack of the needed materials and   time given to accomplish the task was toughly against the study

1.5 Research Methodology

This research work employ only one main method in gathering basic functional information and data needed for the development of this software.

1. Direct interview: this method is necessary in order to gather reliable information of how the student result is being graded presently.
2. Document inspection; the term document refers to paper or which data has been recorded which include pre printed result. The document were collected from examination officer

1.6 Statement of problem

There has been this problem of too much work for the department examination officer owing to the increase of students in the institution, the department examination officer is faced  with heaps of files .At times sorting out a particular students file takes time. This bitter complaint and the delay in the preparing of this students examination Result has been the major concern and therefore has intensified the need to design a generating software which will go a long way in tackling these problems and proffering solutions, at the same time to quicken the generating of student’s result.

1.7 Definition of terms

        The following are some terms commonly used in this project.

• DATA: Raw information or it is fact and figure collected together for references.
• INPUT: is the term denoting either an entrance which are inserted into a system. These are hardware that helps to send data in form of input to the computer.
• ON-LINE DATA ENTRY: Data is entered directly into the computer one transaction at a time (also known as transaction processing) under program control.
• OUTPUT: These are computer hardware that are responsible for giving out processed information.
• SOFTWARE: the program and other operating information used by computer; also a set of programswritten to carry out some task in the computer. Logical related programs that works together to control hardware.
• STUDENTS EXAMINATION RESULT: An official record of student’s work that show the courses they have taken and the marks they have achieved.
• DESIGN: The art or process of deciding how something will look, works etc.
• DOCUMENTATION: material that provides official information or evidence or that serves as record; written specifications and information that describes the product. The act of recording something in a document.