CHAPTER ONE

• INTRODUCTION

Before Education, in the beginning for many years, children taught themselves using everything around them (surrounding, friends, themselves etc.), they taught themselves by being self-directed, playing and exploration. Regardless, if parents did not force children to go to school, they would not be competent adults when they are grown.

Education in the most populous black nation “Nigeria “blessed with a lot of ethnic groups; Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo being the most recognized in the world started with the first mission school which was founded in 1843 by Methodists but the Anglican Church missionary society expanded it in the early 1850’s by finding schools where children are taught about culture, social activities and work for the western education but this was prohibited by the northerners who focused primarily on Islamic education for themselves(Muslims). Post-independence brought about a major development of education in Nigeria with increase in the number of the formal education system which includes 6 years of primary schooling, 3 years of junior secondary schooling, 3 years of senior secondary schooling and 4/5 years of university education, finally directing towards a bachelor’s level degree in majority of the subjects (Sherif 2016).

Compiling of results for quite a number  students was a burden to lecturers and alongside getting a transcript for each student’s result was to be solved by building a platform where registration of courses, result processing and transcript generation could be made easy with one having a desktop. The manual method of checking results for example; Students going to the notice board to check results. With student’s mentality, they calculate to make sure what they were given was actually what they deserved. Most times some students get undeserved marks, while others get unfairly marked down, this causes delay of results for corrections, which might be unfavorable to students especially the final year students. All this happens because a lecturer was tired and calculated wrongly. Transcripts would be needed to have meaningful information about the result without stressing yourself on the details of the results because it has a clear description of what the student has and final grades. With all this, security would be needed because without this platform having security students could try to get access the result and manipulate it in their favor.

With the use of computers for information processing, the accompanying are conceivable: moment access to understudy’s close to home and course data, moment understudy data refreshing, programmed calculation of the Grade Point Average (GPA), era of the graduating understudies list, checking of fizzled courses, staying up with the latest record of the whole understudy body in the foundation, putting away course data, for example, course code, course portrayal, course unit, and scores with the end goal of GPA calculation, and creating easy to understand information section screens for convenience. It is unfortunate that all educational establishments in the creating scene, for example, the Universities, Colleges of Education and polytechnics in Nigeria, still work under the manual technique for record keeping calculation of GPA and very inclined to blunders (Emmanuel, B and Choji, D.N 2012). Example of Universities that operate under manual method is Benue State University.

Transcript can be defined as the statement or record of academic Performance of a student within the period of study in an institution. An academic transcript is used to inform an institution or organization the general performance of the student.

The manual system of applying for the transcript has not been efficient. Hence there has been enormous cost incurred as well as delay in submitting application for the processing of transcript. Owing to those problems the researcher looked at designed an efficient design and implementation of web-based transcript system.

1.2  BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Most universities and polytechnics still use the manual way of viewing results, going to the board and they crowd is always unbearable coupled with the errors due to human imperfections. One out of some Universities that still operate using the manual way or result viewing includes Benue State University. The university was set up by Benue State Government in 1991, the state government shaped a 13-part directing board of trustees to get ready for and acquire endorsement for the college. The university started offering classes for the 1992/1993 school year in four colleges: Arts, Education, Sciences, and Social Science. Two more colleges, Law and Management Sciences went ahead stream in the 1993/94 scholarly year. A post graduate school took off in the 1998/1999 scholastic year while the College of Health Science was set up in the 2003/2004 scholarly session. Benue State is owned by the state Government, and it is authorize by the National Universities Commission (NUC). This university alongside many other universities use the 5 grade point for result accumulations.

1.3   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The problems encountered in using the already existing manual system for applying for a transcript are:

1. It contributes to de delay in processing of the transcript, as well as stress on the part of the applicants and huge amount of money spent by applicants, as long distance transportation has to be made in order to apply for the transcript.

IMPORTANCE OF ONLINE TRANSCRIPTING

(Beka et al.,2015) states that on-line transcript system is an avenue to produce accurate and presentable information on transcript to link different geographical areas towards making the world a global village (i.e Global Area Network) GAN. It makes information on transcript available and affordable at the most economical cost. The ability to share information is particularly valuable in an academic environment as it reduces the time and amount of money that is spent on transportations, and even loss of lives.

Considering the current move to globalization and the benefit of on-line processing system, design and implementation of web-based transcript system implemented in the exams and records will ensure that the tertiary institutions (i.e AISP) is not left behind in addition to providing a high degree of flexibility and academic excellent for technological freedom.

(Abel et al.,2014) Opined that “on-line processing of transcript is a method of creating on-line documents that contain active links to other part of the same document” “Hypertext Links”, he adds, “have been traditionally cited as non-linear reading tools, but they can also be used to present a document as it was written on page at a time” he added that the worldwide web protocol offers a way for hypertext implementation simply to locate the relevant information on-line.

(Akinmosin, 2014) observes that sending transcript on-line using information technology facilities can be quite a challenging task in the academic environment. Since the design and implementation of web-based transcript system will be charged with handling the applications of students for the processing of transcript hence it will ensure speed and accuracy in collecting information of the application of the applicants for the processing of the transcript to avoid miscalculations. This will be the best approach to developing the on-line transcript system for the institution.