Full Project – Web-based assignment submission and feedback system

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CHAPTER ONE

1.0 GENERAL OVERVIEW

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Assessments are frequently used as a means of assessing students’ knowledge and performance. However, assessments also exist in order to improve the quality of learning. According to Brown et al (Brown et al 1994), they should diagnose a student’s strengths and weaknesses so that the latter can be addressed through further learning and tutoring support. They should also provide students with feedback on their progress and achievements as well as motivate them, and provide teachers with feedback on the success of their teaching.

It can be argued that assessments can achieve these purposes only if a quality feedback system is in place. Furthermore, the QAA code of practice on feedback to student stresses this further (John A. Stonner, 2008). “12- Institutions should ensure that appropriate feedback is provided to students on assessed work in a way that promotes learning and facilitates improvement” In summary, we believe that quality feedback needs to be timely, empowering, manageable and individual; i.e. it needs to fit each student’s achievement. In this project, we look at how we address the needs of an institution where the widening participation policy has led to an increase of students in either a full-time or part-time employment. These students may be either in work-base courses, part-time courses or even full-time courses. The main aim for our institution is to improve student retention through their engagement with the course. In order to maintain their engagement with the course, a majority of student assignments are portfolio based. However, due to the students’ work commitments, their campus attendance is not always easy and therefore ensuring they receive feedback on time to act upon is quite challenging. The other problem that the institution is facing is that most courses are run in parallel on different campuses. This has made the management of assignment submission, marking and feedback process very challenging to implement. The work in this project investigates reengineering the assignment process that will address the problems stated above. The main premise for reengineering is to provide automation support for the process which will make the process easier to follow for both the students and the lecturers. The automation will also assure the quality of the process and that departmental and institutional policies are uniformly enforced.

The assignment submission and feedback process has been very much a paper based process. The students submit the assignment to the faculty office. After all the submissions have been recorded, they are then collected by the lecturer to be marked and provide feedback. However the feedback is not given to the students until the marks are moderated by a second marker. A number of modules are run across three sites; this has resulted on the staff coordinating the marking of assignments which relies heavily on the internal post. Furthermore, in the case of a portfolio assignment, the process is repeated for each element of the portfolio. The tutor has also the task of collecting back each element of the assignments and putting all these elements together.

1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS

Today we are in the information age where information travels with the speed of light as against the Dark Age where information traveled at a relatively slow pace. The information technology system made possible the achievement of most organization. At the same time however technology can obscure essential relationship between information resource and organization objective.

When a lecturer gives assignment to students, he expects them to submit either a printed or written hardcopy of the assignment solution which can bring about some flaws during the submission process. Some of these flaws include:

Submitting a particular assignment more than once i.e. a Student could submit two copies of the same assignment with different solutions to confuse the lecturer in choosing which one to validate.
Loss or damage to the hardcopy, written or printed submitted by the Student.
Students could persuade the lecturer to allow them to submit the assignment after the deadline for submission has expired.

The assignment submission and feedback will go a long way in solving these crucial setbacks;

The website will not allow any Student to submit an assignment more than once, so there can be no duplicate copies of any assignment by any Student.
The copy of each assignment submitted by each Student can be downloaded by the lecturer onto his personal computer there will also be a backup on the internet for future reference.
No Student, no matter what can submit an assignment after the deadline date for submission has expired. The website will bounce back such attempt.

In addition, the website also allows for communication among Students.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT:

The main objective of this project work is to design a web based application that will:

Allow a lecturer set assignment and specify a deadline submission date for Students for proper feedback.
To give the student the opportunity to receive rapid feedback
To enable the student respond to feedback without being tied to polytechnic working hours
To provide a means for electronic feedback (either embedded or separate)
Allow Students to view the list of assignment set by the lecturer.
Allow Students upload their assignment in pdf, doc or docx format before submission.
Allow Lecturer to view, download and mark any assignment submitted by any Student.
Allow Students communicate with one another on the internet by sending messages or files to themselves.

1.4 SCOPE AND LIMITATION

The scope of this project is to provide a functional website for department of computer science, Abdu Gusau Polytechnic T/Mafara, where students can register accounts and view, submit assignments and also check for feedback on a valid provided date by the lecturer online and to provide clear design guidelines of its maintenance and modification and how it was developed.

1.5 LIMITATIONS:

The speed and availability of Internet services is also a concern as passport will have to be uploaded (This take a considerable amount of bandwidth).
Not all potential Students know how to use the Internet. Although the registration process is simple, some students would still find it easier to fill a paper form than to go through an online registration process.

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

There is an absolute need for this project because it will go a long way in:

Conserving time, energy and resources.
Taking the institution to a hallmark.
Enhancing the computer literacy among Students.

1.7 DEFINITION OF TERM

ASSIGNMENT: A task that is assigned or undertaken.

ONLINE: Attached to or available through a central computer or computer network.

WEBSITE: This is an online application that contains information and also can perform user specified task.

JAVA: A trademark for a high-level computer programming language that allows small application programs to be downloaded from a server to a client along with the data that each program processes.

PHP: This is a high-level computer programming language.

MYSQL: This is sequential query language for data storage as a database back-end.

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