ABSTRACT
The
presence of guidance and counselors in schools is not just for the sake of it,
they are there to direct students on the area they psychologically find them
fit. The job of guidance and counseling towards a future carrier is not an easy
one, the student has to be followed regularly within attitude and academic
performances so that he/she will be directed towards his/her gifted carrier.
This project work researched into the procedure involved in guiding and
counseling students in the secondary schools with a view to coming up with a
modernized system that would help in carrying out the activities affectively.
The problems associated with the existing system were detected and possible
solutions to the problems were provided in the new system. The software used
are visual basic.net professional edition 2008 and Mysql server database
System. The new system is a computerized one, which works automatically; it is
very easy to use, it’s also interactive, cost effective. The new system is
comprehensive enough, timely and accurate in report generation.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Man in search of comfort struggle to meet up with good career
and for this to be achieved, it has to be started as early as possible. From
the time man is born, expectations abound to know what likely he will be able
to do as he grows up. This has to do with his natural behavior and mental
exercise display. This continues in family/parents and other relaxation acting
as counseling unit until the child goes in to school. In school the teacher
takes over the counseling, it is a continuous exercise until one finds one’s
feet, then he can continue from there and equally be in a position to guide and
counsel others.
The stages where much work is carried out on counseling is in
secondary schools .This is a stage when a child is grown to be able to
understand maturely and when the child’s attitude is fully studied in line with
academic performance . In all secondary school across the country , there exist
a guidance and counselor office where people knowledgeable in the area of
psychology are employed in order to help advise the younger ones in school
which way forward to their future career . There people through class
visitation, Observing students during recreation and calling on them at
intervals for questioning, came to know the students betters and be able to
guide and counsel them in their future career probably in university or in any
other area of endeavor.The job of counseling in secondary school is not an easy
job, taking into consideration the number of students involved with respect to
the number of staff involved. It is always very difficult to handle all the
students and to remember everything about the students. This Counseling
exercise needs a sophisticated system for the operation of counselingand
tackling some of the problem associated with the exercise.
Personal behavior and area of interest, they keep very close
marks with the students to make sure that no stone is left unturned. This
aspect of one’s life is taken very seriously in schools because that is mainly
the reason people go to school for the academics tests and examination only.
The battle of career choice is handed over to individual when he/she attain a
stage of being able to decide for himself what he/she really wants and how best
possible to get such height. The person can steer the wheels directly to his
destination or deviate in the other way due to carelessness or youthful
exuberance; but the end justifies the means. Sometimes, due to laxity and
incapability on the side of the career guidance and counselor in schools, most
of the students are led astray.
Hoyfield (1997) argues that a good career in life makes a lot
of meaningful process in life. He queried „’what is comfort and where comfort
without a good career’’. In his own views, it takes a long and rough way to
arrive and clinch a good career but when one finally gets to it, life comes to
be what nature made it be. He made it clear and that life is associated with a
good career and that such a career is what can give full meaning of life a
priceless gift of nature. Statistics shows that people who find good career are
enjoying high standard of living and the unlucky ones cry of frustration and
negatives social factors that limits life.
The number of students involved in schools counseling are
very enormous and few staff in counseling cannot handle the job effectively. It
is always very easy to forget information about students and to reach all the
students, contributes problems.Another major problem of the counseling is
information storage. The mode of storage of information observed from the
students in different forms is not reliable and this makes the counseling to
apply guess work in trying to direct students in their future career work.
This is a very big delay in taking decision on students
concerning their future career. This is also because referencing to students
information for decision making takes a very long time.
The primary aim of this projects work is to provide lasting
solution to the problem affecting counseling exercise in secondary schools. The
following objectives below are the study
i. To make the criteria and process involved in
the exercise of counseling very easy and flexible
ii. To carefully take care of the burden, the
staff faces in trying to do the work of counseling manually.
iii. To provide adequate enabling environment for
counseling on student to give them better career perspective
iv. To maintain adequate observed information on
students for future reference and quick decision taking.
The purpose of this project work is to probe into the
developing a counseling software for schools with a view of creating awareness
of the use computer in counseling with due consideration of this new technology
advancement.
This
study is of numerous important to the guidance and counselor department and the
society in general in different ways:
i.
It
will help the counselor to always direct the students in their best career area
with happiness because it will be result oriented.
ii.
It
will also help to eliminate the word frustration among the people which is very
common in the society.
iii.
It
will ease of the stress of the counselor using his/her brain trying to store
information about different students in their large number and each student’s
area of interest he/she is fit for.
iv.
Using
an automated system in this situation would be very efficient especially in
information storage.
1.5 Scope/ Delimitation Of The Study
The study covers the design and implementation of
computerized career choice counseling system in secondary schools.
The
major constraints identified in the course of this work are as follows:
i.
There
are many secondary schools in primitive/rural areas that have little or no
technological facilities in the school. Implementation of this system in such a
situation becomes a problem.
ii.
There may also be staffs in the school that do
not have knowledge on proper usage of computer. If such staff works in the
guidance and counseling unit, it would be cumbersome for him/her to operate the
computerized system. Recommended solution to these problems is that there
should be a room forproper training of personnel who cannot operate computers
properly. Also, government should help provide technological facilities in
those schools in the rural areas that have little or no level of technology.
COUNSELLING: To give advice to another
SOCIETY:
This is an organized group of people living together and having things together
AUTOMATED: Less independent of human direction
and utilizes techniques of automation.
PROMPT: To motivate an action
SYSTEM: A combination of parts organized in
a whole working together to achieve a common purpose
PSYCHOLOGY: The study of mind and its function
DATA: This is a raw and unprocessed facts
and figures obtained from experiments, research, surveys etc. used to develop
something or make decision.
RECORD: To write down event so that it can
be remember
COMPUTER: This is an electronic device that
accepts raw facts as data and processes it to give useful information.
INFORMATION: Data that has been processed.