Njala University was established in 1964. Since then, it has served as a major centre for training middle level agricultural extension workers and teachers at secondary school level. With the promulgation of the University Act 2005, the college, together with the Bo Teachers College, the School of Hygiene and the Paramedical School in Bo, constituted Njala University as an autonomous body, with Bonthe Technical Training College (BONTECH) as an affiliate tertiary institution. Currently, Njala University is comprised of two campuses, the Bo Campus and Njala Campus. The University has eight Schools: Agriculture, Education, Environmental Sciences, Social Sciences, Community Health Sciences, Technology, Forestry and Horticulture, and Medical
Sciences. In August 2005, six of the Schools became operational, viz: the Schools of Education, Social Sciences and Community Health Sciences at the Bo Campus, and the Schools of Agriculture, Environmental Sciences and Technology at the Njala Campus. These Schools prepare sub-degree, undergraduate and postgraduate students for careers in teaching, agricultural extension and in various specialties in the environmental and community health sciences, and in information technology. The Schools also conduct basic and applied research and disseminate the results of these researches through the University’s extension services. In this way, Njala University applies in a practical manner the product of its knowledge and experiences within the country and beyond. . In this way, Njala University applies in a practical manner the product of its knowledge and experiences within the country and beyond. Njala University was mandated to:
In addition to the two main University campuses, Njala University is host to other institutions; there is a National Agricultural Training Centre (NATC) (formally known as the Certificate Training Centre), jointly founded by the Government of Sierra Leone and the British Government; and the Njala Agricultural Research Centre (formally Institute of Agricultural Research, IAR), a wing of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (MAFFS), founded to carryout research on root and tuber crops and maize. NATC was setup to train agricultural middle-level manpower.
Njala University operates on two campuses, namely Njala Campus and Bo Campus:
The Examination Office NU Registry is responsible for projecting time tables for exams, conducting sessional exams, obtaining result from departments, inputting of sessional grades into spreadsheet application, publishing and producing statements of result and final grade point average reports for comprehensive examination.
The grading system uses six ranges of letter grades A-F converted to six Numeric grade points, ranging from 0-5 ( A -5, B – 4, C – 3, D – 2, E – 1, F – 0). These points are then multiplied by the credit hour offered. The total points acquired by the total credit hours are computed to provide the
SGPA which is a student’s sessional GP per semester. The CGPA contains continuous assessment from year two to final year, first semester ending with primary examination result. The CGPA scores obtained during four sessions is set aside from which 60% is added to the comprehensive grades and the Comprehensive Examination grades make up 30% (percent) of the assessment and five (5.0%) is computed for project/ dissertation and 5% for internship. Finally a total score describe as FGPA accounts for the final score of each student performance in their respective Degree Programme. It is clearly stated that for a student to have a passing grade, the baseline for promotion is 3.0. From 3.0 to 3.59 FGPA is Division three (3), and From 3.6 to 3.99 is Division Two (2) Lower and From 4.0 to 4.29 is Division two (2) upper and finally 4.30 to 5.0 is considered First class First Division. But this grading system is only confined within the School of Technology.
As it is observed that, the use of computers for information processing facilitates immediate access to students’ personal and course information, student information updating and monitoring of failed courses at Njala University. For system support, storing course information such as course codes, course descriptions, credit units, and grade points for the purpose of automatic computation of the grades are required. The system keeps up to-date records of the entire student body in the Department. To support procedures like registration, data upload, queries to the system friendly graphical user interfaces were developed for the ease of use. All these have been noted in the database design and implementation of this system. As the first step of software engineering process of system design we started with interviewing lecturers and students, and compiled our observations into a case study of the state of manual student result preparation and data handling which served as the major issues addressed in the design.
This project aims at defining overall software requirement for Students Progress Result Management System. Many efforts have been made to define the requirements exhaustively and accurately. The final product will be having only features/functionalities mentioned in this document and assumptions for any additional functionality/feature should not be made by any of the parties involved in developing/testing/implementing /using this product.
Following the challenges identified in the existing system, such as delaying in submitting grade sheets to the exams office, preparation and release of students sessional results, missing grade issues, duplication of students records, excessive paperwork in results processing, poor record keeping of student’s information, poor data and security management of students records and files, the unavailability of transcripts on demand are all compounded to create a mammoth challenge in sessional grade computational system.
There are also problems of unavailability of information to guide students during registration in NU registry-the reason are entirely connected with late acquisition of matriculation numbers. The flat file database management system adopted in Excel is prone to erroneous report generation and omissions of CGPA computation. Hence user might mistakenly remove functions or equations from one cell to another. The researchers deemed it essential to develop a more reliable, consistent and user-friendly system that will revert the prevailing challenges in the current system. The propose database management system called “Student Progress Report Management system” is intended to replace the error-prone system by December 2019 so as to terminate or end up these multiple anomalies in student sessional grade computation.
The application will manage the information about various students enrolled into diverse programmes, the courses offered during first and second semesters of the academic year (session) are entered into the database system, the marks obtained by students in various courses are computerized and published by the automated system. This will permit easy and speedy access to student information especially sessional results figures which determines the Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of student course performance.
The major aim of this research project is to develop an automated progress result management system that will save the time in processing sessional grades point averages in the School of Technology, Njala University,
The project seeks to develop and to implement a database Management system that will automate the processing of student progress result computation in Njala University Examination Office of the Registry.
The specific objectives of the new system are;
The significance of the study may tend to resolve the late publication of student sessional grades and also enables students to promptly access their results in a timely manner. This might help parents and other sponsors to speedily pay tution fees of the students thereby avoiding embarrasment during examination sessions. The exams office might also benefit from this project work as they might in a timely manner prepare timetables for subsequent semesters in the academic year.
The scope of the study is confined within Njala University Examination Office where grades are compiled, processed and published. The students services department is also under the same scope as they are responsible for dealing with matters related to students admission, attendance, sicknesses, excuses and transfers from one program to another. The finance department is similary fall within the scope of this study as they are concerned with student tuition fees payment and other charges.
This study had a lot of challenges as the project researchers were faced with the problem of doing their preliminary investigations in the examination office where sensitive information about students’ sessional grades were difficult to acquire from the Chief Exam Officer. However, after many pleas by us and our project supervisor, we were finally granted permission to make photocopies of the document we needed for this project work.
Attitude of data entry personnel – It was also a big problem for the researchers when it came to the interpretation of letter grades to numeric values. Many efforts were made to get a clear interpretation from the data entry clerk and this has had a negative impact on our research work. Compounded with that issue, she refused to give us the actual credit hours assigned to certain courses.
Rainy Season – After the completion of our final comprehensive exams in August, there were often torrential down pour throughout the country so little efforts was made to start the project work quite earlier.
Inadequate Financial Help – Knowing very well that we are poor students and not attached to any substantive job it was difficult to procure finances for this project work especially when we had to pay huge amount of money on transportation fare from Njala to our various residential locations in the country.
Poor Coordination among Project Researchers – Because of the gap of isolation between us in terms of diverse locations and townships we were found, it was not very easy for us to meet and make proper plans for this project work besides one or two of us needed rest after a two weeks examination exercise at Njala Campus. Above all we never wanted to return to Njala to soon to start the project work.
Poor Health Condition of our Project Supervisor – It was rather unfortunate that by the time we intended to seek this project work, our supervisor on the other hand was seriously sick and could not have any time to focus and guide us to with the write up and project development approach so we had to wait until he was up and ready to work with us.
GP
Grade Point
GPA
Grade Point Average
SGPA
Sessional Grade Point Average
CGPA
Cumulative Grade Point Average
FGPA
Final Grade Point Average
NU
Njala University
DBMS
Database Management System
DB
Database