A web-based system for final year student project allocation and management

Abstract

In Nigerian universities, the final year project is a requirement for a student to attain a bachelor’s degree. The existing process of coordinating the final year project among students and supervisors can be somewhat tedious for project coordinators, especially when the volume of students is large and also inconvenient to students due to constant follow-up for project approval. OBJECTIVES: This study proposes a web-based system that improves on the existing manual system of final year project management in the Faculty of Computing and Information Science, Al-Qalam University, Katsina, through the design and implementation of a web-based allocation system for final year student project management. METHODS: An evolutionary model of the software process was employed in the analysis, design and implementation of the proposed web-based system, the system was concurrently designed, implemented and put into operation incrementally for a period of two academic sessions in the faculty of Computing and Information Science, Al-Qalam University. The system was implemented using web technologies such as PHP, Mysql, javascript, HTML and CSS. Observation techniques were used in evaluation of the system. RESULTS: The operation of the system was observed to ascertain any positive productivity gap with the introduction of the system as compared to the manual system. The results of the evaluation indicated an improvement over the existing manual system.  and confirmed that the system is useful to its users. CONCLUSION: With the advancement in Information technology, there is always room for improvement on existing systems. The work described in the study addresses some inefficiencies with the final year project management activity in the faculty of Computing and Information Science, Al-Qalam University.