Abstract
“HOSTEL ALLOCATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM” is software developed for managing various activities in the hostel. For the past few years the number of educational institutions is increasing rapidly. Thereby the number of hostels is also increasing for the accommodation of the students studying in this institution. And hence there is a lot ofstrain on the person who are running the hostel and software’s are not usually used in this context. This particular project deals with the problems on managing a hostel and avoids the problems which occur when carried manually. Identification of the drawbacks of the existing system leads to the designing of computerized system that will be compatible to the existing system with the system which is more user friendly and more GUI oriented.We can improve the efficiency of the system, thus overcome the drawbacks of the existing system
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Hostel: A hostel is essentially a form of accommodation that offers reasonably priced, shared accommodation to travelers in either private or dormitory rooms.
A management information system (MIS): is a system that provides information needed to manage organizations effectively. In 1912, in Altena Castle in Germany, Richard Schirrmann created the first permanent Jugendherberge or “Youth Hostel”. These first Youth Hostels were an exponent of the ideology of the German Youth Movement to let poor city youngsters breathe fresh air outdoors. The youths were supposed to manage the hostel themselves as much as possible, doing chores to keep the costs down and build character as well as being physically active outdoors. Because of this, many Youth Hostels closed during the middle part of the day.
There are several differences between hostels and hotels, including:
- Hostels tend to be budget-oriented; rates are considerably lower, and many hostels have programs to share books, DVDs and other items.
- For those who prefer an informal environment, hostels do not usually have the same level of formality as hotels.
- For those who prefer to socialize with their fellow guests, hostels usually have more common areas and opportunities to socialize. The dormitory aspect of hostels also increases the social factor.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The growing number of students in higher institutions all over the world has posed a lot of accommodation problem on the part of students and school management. Students at the beginning of each session waste half of the semester looking for accommodation. The few hostels that exist in the universities are not properly managed. Statistics of the number of rooms required to match the growing number of students are far fetched. Most often, students pay for hostel fee and end up not getting one due to lack of bed space. Hostel administrators cannot give accurate information of the occupancy of a particular room. These and many more form the statement of the problem that necessitated this research work.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The project is designed to help in the management of hostel allocation in the university. The main objective of the new system includes:
- Design and develop a central database system that would serve as hostel database, which will contain information on all the available rooms in the hostels.
- Design a computer – driven hostel allocation system for allocating hostel rooms to students.
- To generate reports on hostel occupancy
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The new system designed for computer driven student’s hostel allocation will among other things:
- Facilitate timely allocation of hostel rooms to students
- Check the hostel occupancy at any time for information management
- Enable management to plan on improving hostel living condition.
- Have first hand information on the statistics of students in the hostel.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The research work will cover among other things:
- Hostel allocation
- Hostel rooms registration
- Student reports.
The research will be carried out usingOGUN STATE COLLEGE OF HEALTH TECHNOLOGY, Ijebu, Ogun State
1.6 LIMITATIONS
Some of the constraints encountered during this project design include the following:
- Financial Constraints: The design was achieved but not without some financial involvements. One had to pay for the computer time. Also the typing and planning of the work has its own financial involvements.
- High programming Technique: The programming aspect of this project posed a lot of problematic bugs that took us some days to solve. Problems such database connections using VB and MS Access database posed a lot of challenges.
- Few Literature Sources: The topic though seems to be a common term; it is not a popular topic to surf from the Internet. It had fewer literature sources.