CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Our saviour Institute of
Science Agriculture and Technology (OSISA TECH) Enugu is a private Polytechnic
approved by the federal Government of Nigeria. It was officially opened on Jan
21, 1999 by the Federal minister for education, Prof .Oketi Ambrose. It is the second catholic Polytechnic founded
by Rev. Fr. Prof E.M.P Edeh. The school is managed by the congregation of
Sisters of Jesus the Saviour, a religious congregation of nuns founded by him.
The school operates the faculty system and presently has four faculties;
Engineering, Environmental, Management and social sciences and natural science
In this polytechnic, there is need for automated method of keeping data,
more so a greater need for an online school fees payment system. This would go
a long way in alleviating the various problems and stress involved in the
manual method of school fees payment and clearance in the institution.
Moreover, the issue of delayed youth service as a result of inability to
complete the tedious manual process of clearance which involves school fees
clearance would be curtailed when this new system is implemented.
Hence it became imperative for
an online school fees system to eliminate the shortcomings of the manual system
in place.
These days every sector is known with
the word-computer. We can find computers at everywhere around us. In fact
modern world will be incomplete without computers and their applications. It’s
almost impossible to even imagine the modern facilities without the use of
computers. For many individuals computer means PC, on which they can see
movies, play games, prepare office sheets and manage daily planners. But this
is just a page of the book of computers.
Computer means much more than a PC. A
computer can simply be defined as a machine which takes instructions and
perform computations and operations accordingly. These commanded instructions
are known as programs and computers execute these programs to do an operation.
At a time, a set of instructions can be given to a computer to perform several
operations, simultaneously. This feature is a point of distinction for the
computers.
Many types of computers are available
these days. Depending on their usage and service application they can be
classified in various categories. Supercomputers are capable of doing trillions
of calculations in fraction of seconds, so they are used as controlling units
of banking transactions; to keep records of railway, in schools to monitor school
fees payment system in the bursary department and air transportations; to
conduct decent flow of telecommunication and many more complex operations can
be controlled, organized and conducted by using supercomputers.
On the other hand computers are also used in conducting simple operations like
billing, ticket transactions, record maintenance, security analysis etc. And
even computers (PC) are also used to do home based general activities like
office sheet maintenance, day planner, entertainment etc. So computers are
involved in every sector of life with different forms and different
applications.
In modern word everything around us
like GPS, ATM machines, cell phones, petrol pumps, portable play stations and
all other modern devices use computer controlling units to conduct their
featured operations. This simply implies that, when this new mode of operation
is implemented in the bursary department of Our Saviour institute of Science,
Agriculture and technology using computer the process will be efficient and
free from error
1.2
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The processes of manual school fees
for student in the polytechnic has resulted to a lot of problems which makes
student not to write exams on time because of the slow rate of processing the
school fess from the bursary department was done manually. And sometimes lead
to the misplacement of the school fees tellers because of lack of adequate
storage medium.
1.3 OBJECTIVES
OF THE STUDY
The objectives of this project include:
i. To provide a reliable and transparent
system devoid of personal inclinations and interest
ii. To provide borderless access
iii. To alleviate the problems and stress
of travelling and queuing up of students during clearance in the bursary
department due to manual process of school fees payment.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE STUDY
The
project work will help in a good number of ways to ease the queuing system in
the polytechnic as the online clearance and school fees payment system will
help students to achieve what ever they want to achieve without coming to the
various offices for clearance and fees.
The Online school fees system will allows the
students to check their school fees status if they are in any way indebted to
the school, fill and submit their school fees form, and obtain their clearance
form for that semester.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This research work is limited to
school fees payment and clearance system for the student of Our Saviour
Institute of Science Agriculture and technology. The software developed will be
carried out using HTML, macromedia fire,
Dreamweaver and wamp server so as
to manage both the database and at the same time make the software
online.
1.6 DEFINITION
OF TERMS
Computer Network: ComputerNetwork is a system that
connects two or
more computers together using a
communication link.
(Bufts 1989)
World Wide Web: World Wide Wed simply called www is
the most
important tool of the Internet. (Jeff
20010)
Clearance letter: Official
certification of blamelessness, trustworthiness, or suitability for graduation
and issue of certificates in degree course.
( Gabreal 1990)
Databases: A systematically arranged collection
of computer data,
structured so that it can be
automatically retrieved or
manipulated. It is also called
databank. (Adoca 2001)
File Transfer: Any kind of computer file can be sent via the Internet
from one Internet user to another.
Table of accounts on
spreadsheets, design by a graphic
artists, music sound
files etc, can all be exchanged in
this way. (Smith 1999)
Web Brower: This is a special kind of software that processes hypertext
make-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. (Cleff 2000)
Web Site: A website is a collection of many interconnected web pages
organized by a specific college,
organization company etc,
containing web pages (good and
commodities) on the Internet.
Web site are stored on web
servers. There are many web site and
thousand of HTML pages on each web
site. A web site is a
treasure of information and
entertainment. ( Donald 1986)
Hyperlinks: Hyperlinks are highlighted words and
phrase you find on web
documents that you can click on as to
jump to some other
documents or Internet services. (
Clex 1990)
Offline: Disconnected from computer network;
describes a computer
terminal or peripheral device
disconnected from a computer
network. (Wikipedia 2011)
System: Set of computer components that is, an
assembling of hardware,
software and peripherals functioning
together. ( Fans 2011)