CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
A
clearance is a certificate giving permission to disengage from an institution.
Final year student who have satisfied the academic requirements to graduate
must undergo a clearance process before they disengage from the University. The
process of clearance involves the Student’s academic department, faculty,
bursary, Students Affairs, Library, Hostel, Sport department, Health Centre and
Registry (Exams and Records). A student is allowed to collect his/her
graduation Certificate only after he/her has been cleared for something to be done.
According to Awuzie (2013) Clearance
is the process of determining and negotiating any permission that are needed to
include the use of someone else’s intellectual property in creative project.
Clearance systems for graduating students are vital incessant procedures and
process in every University that is inevitable. The clearance must be carried
out so as to check if the student is eligible to go for NYSC service and not
owning the school anything. It is the University practice to carry out these processes
at the completion of the last exam in school, where the student did not have
any carryover left.
Online clearance system is a web base system which makes use
of the internet. College of Agriculture Ishiagu, Eboyi State current method of
clearance is not internet base which increase the stress of student going from
school to school to sign the forms. The form given to student must be signed by
the following; Dean of all school, University Liberian, Head of department,
Sport official, Dean of student affair.
Thus the need of a web based clearance system for graduating
student is inevitable to save the time and the cost of transportation from one
location to another.
Currently,
the student’s clearance process is done manually in institutions. The aim of this
project is to design and develop an online student’s clearance system using PHP
and MySQL that will eliminate the delays in the manual process and create a
central repository for students to be cleared. It will be implemented as a
web-based application which will be a central repository for clearing students.
The main modules of clearance system are Main Module, Clearance Registration,
Cleared/Not Cleared and Administer. The user is created and managed by the
System Administrator using the Administer module.
As
many universities have choosing to pursue the dynamic educational options
available online. The advantage of e-learning are many, as people of all ages
and backgrounds become increasingly reliant on the internet for information,
online learning become more convenient and efficient here, the need for an
online clearance system. The skills needed to access and comprehend information
online are becoming common place, and the flexibility of wireless computing
means that any coffee shop, airport or bedroom can become a classroom online courses, registration, clearance
have few, if any scheduling restrictions, well-integrated learning resources
and competitive degree option, with an online clearance system. The changing
online college landscape now includes online clearance system, traditional
undergraduate and general studies programs. However career learning is still
the most popular online training option.
1.2 STATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM
In
the institution where there is an increase in the number of Graduating
Students, the problem of manually documenting and keeping track of student
graduating will challenge this project work seeks to address it as it becomes
very alarming when there is a change in management. The processes of clearing
students after their graduation requires that the students will be cleared in
various departments and information units. Among which are:
·
Library fines and overdue or lost
library materials from the university
·
Departmental Dues
·
Residence hall damage charges
·
Return of athletic equipment (if any)
·
Student Union Fee
·
Bursary and all other charges
In Federal College of Agriculture
Ishiagu, Eboyi State clearing of graduating students has always been a manual
process. Effort has been made by the University to replace the existing manual
process with an automated clearance system for graduating student but to this
day clearance is still a manual process. It is evident that the registration is
incapable to totally replace the manual process of online clearance system for
graduating student.
It is obvious that we are now in a
technology era where science and technology applied to almost every aspect of
life to make work faster, easier and efficient. As a Federal College of
Agriculture it is our duty to lead the way into Science and Technology for
other institution and organization to emulate by implementing automated systems
that will replace all manual process within our University System.
The manual process of clearing student has a lot of
limitation which include
i. The integrity of information is not fully guaranteed, as
there is high risk of information getting to unauthorized or wrong hand that
may manipulate the information illegally making the information inaccurate.
ii. In
the absence of personnel in charge of any of the clearance form processes, the
entire clearance registration process is delayed until such personnel is
available
iii
Too much time is wasted before a student successfully completes his/her
clearance registration form
iv The manual process is only capable of attending to a limited
number of student a day, hence students who are not attended to will, have to
come back the next day until they successfully complete their clearance form
registration.
Furthermore,
for a graduating student to carry out his/her clearance from all these
departments, it normally takes a lot of time and a lot of processes and
delayed. Hence it became imperative for an online clearance system to eliminate
the shortcomings of the manual system in place.
1.3 OBJECTIVES
OF THE STUDY
The
objective of this computer software based online clearance system for the
graduating student includes the following:-
·
To effectively and efficiently process
students clearance.
·
To alleviate the problem and stress of
traveling and queuing up of student during clearance.
·
To provide a reliable and transparent
system devoid of personal inclination and interest.
·
To provide a reliable and transparent
system devoid of personal inclination and interest.
·
To identify issues associated with
current process of clearing final year students in Federal College of
Agriculture Ishiagu, Eboyi State
·
To ensure prompt clearance.
·
Better record keeping.
·
To provide borderless
access.
·
To implement online printing of
clearance certificate for students.
1.4 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY
The
project work will help in a good number of ways to ease the queuing system in
the university as the online clearance system will help student to achieve
whatever they want to achieve without coming to the various offices for clearance.
Online clearance system is basically design to save user
information, facilitate the manipulation of data in a faster rate, provide
concurrent access (access too many user at this time) to authorize users, and
also ensure the integrity and accuracy of the information system store by the
authorize users.
Clear advantages of internet information
processing over those of traditional manual system are higher yields. Online
clearance system allows the users to check their clearance status as whether they
are in any way indebted to the school, fill and submit their clearance form,
and obtain their clearance letter. There are many other advantages of online
clearance system and some of them are listed below
v It save a lot of time.
v It is very convenient to use it right from the
bedroom, office or anywhere in the world.
v Information processing is very fast and delays can
be avoided.
v It is inexpensive to student and school management.
v It is also help the school in reducing cost such as
labor and stationary.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This project work is to develop a
computer software based online clearance system for doing clearance for
graduating students. The clearance includes both departmental, faculty and
library clearance. The software development will be carried out using JOOMLA Ms
Access to manage both the database and at the same time make the software
online.
1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This project covers some of the aspect
of a computer software based online clearance system using Federal College of
Agriculture Ishiagu, Eboyi State as a case study.
For the purpose of this project, the service provided by the
Online Clearance System For Graduating Students (OCSFGS) is only restricted to
all the graduating student in Federal College of Agriculture Ishiagu, Eboyi
State.
However
the following are the constraints:
1. TIME
CONSTRAINTS: Due to time constrain the web-page covers only clearance for
various departments by the graduating student.
2. FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS: Due financial constraints people cannot afford this kind of process online especially towards the cost of accessing the internet. Therefore, it would cost a lot to develop a full web-based clearance system.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS
v Computer Network:
Computer network is a system that connects two or more computers together using
a communication link.
v World Wide Web:
World Wide Web simply called “www” is the most important tool of the internet,
it was created in the late 1980’s in Europe and was limitedly use in academics
cycle.
v Clearances:
official certification of blamelessness trustworthiness or suitability for
graduation and issue of certificate in degree course.
v File Transfer:
Any kind of computer file can be sent via the internet from one internet user
to another. Table of account in a spreadsheet, design by a graphic artist,
music and sound files etc can all be exchanged in this way.
v Web Browser:
this is special kind of software that processes hypertext mark-up language
(HTML) document. In other words, a web browser is a computer program that
interprets HTML command to collect, arranged and display the parts of a web
page.
v Web Site:
A web site is a collection of many interconnected web page organized by a
specific college, organization company etc, containing web page (goods and
commodities) on the internet. Web site is stored on web servers. There are many
web sites and thousand of HTML pages on each web site. A web is a treasure of
information and entertainment.
v Hyperlinks:
Hyperlinks are highlighted words and phrase you find on a web document that you
can click on as to jump to some other document or internet services.
v Online:
connected via a computer attached to or available via a central computer
network
v Offline:
Disconnected from computer network, describe a computer terminal or peripheral
devices disconnected from a computer network.
v System:
Set of computer components that is, an assembling of hardware, software and
peripheral functioning together.
v Database management system or DBMS:
is software designed to assist in maintaining and utilizing large collections
of database.
v Graduating Student: is a student that has completed his/her 4 or 5 year course of
study in the University.
v Internet: is
composed of hundreds of thousands of interconnected networks.
v Database: is a
collection of data or file purpose to assist many users at the same time.