Design and Implementation a Mobile Web Career Portal
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
The
term ‘Portal’ projected the vision that the web site is an entry point to
selected and relevant information in contrast to the general web where all
information is equally accessible. The term portal was quickly accepted and
today it is used liberally by vendors and organizations alike to promote their
web site beyond the original Intra – and Extra – nets. Traditionally regarded as World Wide
Web gateways, portals have become more than convenient launch pad for searches
(internet searches). Today portals are increasingly sophisticated applications
designed to give users simple, quick, secure access to relevant organizational
and personal data.
A web portal is a website that
functions as a point of access to information on the web. A portal or web
portal present information from diverse sources in a unified way. Web Portal
provides way for an organization to provide a consistent look and feel with
access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases which
otherwise would have been different entities altogether.
Many universities have recently joined
the portal band wagon, developing enterprise wide portals and sharing their
experience. Enterprise portal offers important benefits to higher educational
institutions. In particular, they let universities to co-ordinate user access
to multiple services and information sources, and let users access and work
with the information in it (the university web portal). On technological side,
this single application (the web portal) must bring together and make available
vast amount of organization data. Surprisingly little research focus on user
satisfaction however. Many developers do not put user’s appreciation as one of
their topmost priorities when developing their portal sites. To create portal
system that meets both organizational and user’s requirement, universities must
identify portal (web portal) characteristics that contribute to user’s
satisfaction and potentially to their ultimate adoption of the system.
It is worth nothing that the major
function of a university portal is to use a single consistent web-based front
end to present information from a variety of back-end data sources. That is
information about people is stored in one or more database belonging to the
university. This information could include student information, employee
information, course information, alumni information, library information,
school calendar and so on.Also, it is good to know the difference between a
normal university web site and a university portal. A university web site
contains information, but it is up to the visitor to find it either with a
search engine or by navigating through the various links. This way people miss
information, plus it is difficult to find what you really want. While in a
university portal, the user identifies himself to the portal, the portal then
uses the details provided to present relevant information that the person would
require in one piece.
Academic
counselling and tutoring programs have traditionally played an important role
in lowering student desertion and improving academic performance. Ineffective
programs, however, can lead to students making uninformed or incorrect academic
choices, thus contributing to lower academic performance or even desertion
(Soulsby, 1999; Simpson, 2005; Kuittinen, et al, 2001). Students often require
greater attention because of factors related to the academic environment
(particularly increased academic demands) or maturation (i.e. socialization,
personal responsibility, identity and acceptance issues, etc.). Personal and
economic problems are also common among many students. Effective contact time
is extremely important to create the professional and affective bonds necessary
for students to better cope during their first year of studies. Unfortunately,
excessive student-teacher ratios and schedule conflicts sometimes limit the amount
and quality of interaction. A survey conducted at several local Puerto Rican
universities, Navarro et al (2000) discovered that these two factors accounted
for 75% of students who chose not to employ academic counselling services.
Because of their many different roles (instructor, administrator, researcher,
author, etc.) college professors sometimes do not have the time required to
access information in more traditional forms. Efficient access to student
personal information and academic records, as well as making administrative
procedures more efficient and producing required reports is of vital importance
to the counsellor. Additionally, the extra time required to access information
manually increases the frequency of errors and decreases the effective time
spent with students, and the difficulties in booking appointment with conselors
due to time and number of students to be counselled might lead to some students
not fully counselled. Students are also scared to approach staffs facially, and
they might decide not to consult anybody and make mistakes that could ruin
their academics or life. Consequently, information management is important as
it can minimize errors related incomplete or faulty information (Coles, 1999).
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
·
Difficulties in offline students counseling due to time in
booking appointment with an entire class.
·
Difficulties of students approaching lecturers, course
advisers, HODs, etc facially, due to intimidation, fear and shyness.
1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVE
The aim of mobile ISWCP is to solve the
problem of manual counseling by using a
single consistent web-based front end to present information from a variety of
back-end data sources.
The role of a mobile ISWCP is to put a
consistent “face” to this information so that visitors don’t have to
deal with dozens of different web interfaces to get information.
1.4 SCOPE OF STUDY
This project would entail student’s
communication with staff, counselors, etc. Students will also be able to
complain of anything hindering his or her academic pursuit, drop feedbacks as
regards the happenings in the department. More so, the majority of the mobile
ISWCP (Interactive Student Web Counseling Portal) would consider only computer
science department subset as a test platform, covering full time program.
This is because it is assumed the basic
operations or activities that a full time student will carry out is same as
what every other student in other programs (diploma, part time, post graduate,
and so on) will carry out on the portal.
1.5 METHODOLOGY
In order to evaluate this project, the methodology based on
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), generally three major steps are
followed, which are:
·
Analysis.
·
Design.
·
Implementation and testing.