CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.  INTRODUCTION

Automated course registration and exam processing system is a software that facilitates the students course registration and processing of examination result. It will build in an automated information system capability that will ease the stress and enhance all the activities involved in course registration and result processing. The occurrence of examination and assessment irregularities can seriously damage public confidence in the validity and legitimacy of examination and assessment results and should be dealt with as a matter of urgency within the judicial framework established for this purpose[12]. There are different computer programs in different tertiary institutions for computing examination results. However, beyond examination result computation, not many programs in use provide multi-level aggregated data of student population and academic progress at various stages of studentship. The need for data use to inform administrative decisions in tertiary institutions have been emphasized for the purpose of better planning[1]. Almost every section of the educational system requires information processing. With the deployment of a good information system, wear and tear occasioned during data retrieval and handling, and sometimes loss is greatly minimized. Data sharing is less difficult and reproduction becomes a lot more cheaper. Furthermore, information system when employed to the educational sector, prompts the following:- prompt access to students’ personal and course information, instant student information updating, automatic computation of the Grade Point Average (GPA), monitoring of failed courses, quick production of result, storing course information such as course code, course description, course unit and scores for the purpose of GPA computation, and producing user-friendly data entry screens for ease of use. It is unfortunate that most universities in Nigeria still adapt the manual system of course registration and examination result processing. The errors associated with the existing manual method of results computation make it not only desirable but imperative that automated approach be used to the full in measuring students’ progress. The manual methods being employed suffer a number of set-backs. They make the process to be time-consuming and prone to error. They lead to examination results being published late, sometimes with wrong grades being entered and students’ grade point averages being wrongly computed. They also lead to loss or misplacement of student’s result. In some cases, it leads to incoherent course registration. However some departments in some universities in Nigeria are gradually advancing with the new information system processes. Taking the University of Nigeria, Nsukka as a case study,

The current course registration in the university of Nigeria, Nsukka takes the following format. Students on resumption renew their registration and register for courses every new semester. Before the current system was implemented, students register their courses with the different lecturers handling the courses. The list is compiled and sent to the appropriate centre. Later the system improved, a better system came into place where students go online and upon entering their registration number and department, the list of available courses for a particular level for a semester is shown and they register for them by selecting the appropriate box against their chosen courses. This is then submitted online and a printed copy is taken to the appropriate centre for approval. Examination result processing draws all the registered courses together and applies a criteria to process each student’s result at different semesters, session and at the end of the school programme. But the system currently in use poses challenges to the exam officers in the departments. It is observed that students do not register courses as required by the department. This could either be because the students deliberately registered wrongly or the system cannot enlist all the semester courses at a time. Secondly, the current system is unable to enlist all failed courses that were taken in the previous semesters and does not compel students to register them before proceeding to the new ones. It does not have the capability to efficiently reconcile all registered courses with their respective result. Therefore this project work is targeted to eliminate most of the problems inherent in the current system. It would provide a set of structures that keeps databases of all registered courses at all levels enlisting the core courses, electives and required ancilliary courses, it keeps student’s personal information. It will also keep past record of student’s result and a database of all components required for processing results. It will have component that extract each student’s result corresponding to the registered courses and computes the required result at any level and time.

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