The existence of a gap between the theoretical principles and real practical in various fields such as engineering and technology, science, agriculture, medicine, management and other professional educational programs in Nigeria tertiary institution poses a great need to expose students to machines and equipment, professional work methods and ways of safe-guarding the work area and workers in industries and other organizations in order to improve the practical skills of students.
Knowing fully well that Training is a key factor in enhancing the efficiency and expertise of the workforce and no society can achieve meaningful progress without encouraging its youth to acquire necessary practical skills that will enable them to harness available resources to meet the needs of society- an innovative phenomenon in human resources development and training in Nigerian tertiary institutions by the industrial training fund (ITF). This innovative phenomenon was called The Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) otherwise referred to as Industrial Training (IT).
The Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) was initiated in the year 1973 by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF). It is a Tri-partite programme involving Students, Universities and Industries. It is funded by the federal government of Nigeria and jointly coordinated by the ITF and the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC). It is a skill training programme designed to expose and prepare students of post-secondary schools (tertiary institutions) to the industrial work situation they are likely to meet after graduation. A mobile-based SIWES placement survey system can be described in so many ways, but owing to the perspective of this study, it is a mobile system that can be installed and run on different mobile platforms (IOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc.) and different mobile devices (smart phones and tablets) but are written with web technologies. This system (Mobile-based SIWES placement survey system) would be a hybrid application that run inside a native container, and leverage the device’s browser engine (but not the browser) to render the HTML and process the JavaScript locally. This approach is important so as not to make the system platform dependent .
A portal system can be described in different ways depending on differing point of views. To a user of a portal, it is a web system that provides the functions and features to authenticate and identify users. It provides an easy, intuitive, personalized and user-customizable web-interface for facilitating access to information and services that are of primary relevance and interests to them. However, to the organization that sets up the portal, it is a system that helps the organization to catalogue or organize collections of different and multiple sources of information for dissemination to many users according to their specific privileges, needs and interests. Therefore, the main purpose for setting up a portal is to bring vast information and resources available from many sources to many users in an effective manner. There have been several efforts in Nigeria and in other parts of the world to build portal systems that can facilitate administration and learning in higher institutions.
SIWESFEDPOLYOKO is a portal system hosted by the Federal Polytechnic, Oko in Anambra State, Nigeria. It is designed to help the students who are undergoing their four months SIWES training to connect back to the Institution. The blogsite on the portal helps students to keep abreast of what is required of them while on SIWES training and gives them necessary information as regards to their on-going academic program.
The problem faced by Babcock University, in managing SIWES is yet to be eliminated. This problem includes: Difficulty in checking the profile of the student and improper way of storing student information; Stressful process involve in the submission of acceptance letter; Delay in submission of the weekly and SIWES report, job placement. This research will lead to design and development of a cost effective and user friendly system that automates almost all the entire activities of both the student and lecturer during SIWES.
The aim of this project is to build an Electronic-SIWES management and processing system. The following are the objectives of the project;
The design and Implementation of Babcock University SIWES Management System can be achieved through the following methods:
This section presents the significance of the system to students and lecturers. However, the significance of e-SIWES to students is that it reduces the burden of having to manually submit documents to their supervisors in school by providing a platform where they can send those documents via the system, however for lecturers it enables quick and easy management of student accounts and review of SIWES reports.
1.6 BENEFITS OF SIWES
This work consists of five chapters. The subsequent chapters of this project report are as follows:
Chapter Two– Literature Review presents related applications and other materials that relate to the project. It also takes into consideration the historical background of the project.
Chapter Three – System analysis and design, presents methods of the research, gives details of the old system, leading to the system specification, and the design of the proposed system.
Chapter Four-Implementation and Discussion, deals with implementation and operation of the newly proposed system. It would primarily concentrate on how the outcomes of the system design are used in developing the application of the computer based system. It also includes a user guide.
Chapter Five– Summary, Conclusion and Recommendations, give a precise summary of the whole project, draws conclusion and provided recommendations for future work.