Courseware Management System - Assignment Example

ware Management System A manual or automated system; organize to collect, process, transmit and maintain the data i.e.; user information is known as Information. In the world of computer sciences where technologies are advancing day by day giving rise to computer usage door to door. Every organization is maintaining an information system that manipulates the data precisely from one place to another. Professional Colleges require to maintain an information system to work in an organize manner as keeping students information and respective profiles fills number of files and make searches difficult manually. This project tends the college administration work automatically using the machine. Their time assumption and moreover loads of work are lessened as instead of searching paper to paper file to file; searches are made automated. Similarly, manipulating data from one file to another takes number of hours for only organizing the profile of one student but now in the era of computers, using automated information system lessened the time in few minutes. Research for developing Information System is being held. The administrators, instructors and other staff faculty were questioned and queried. The answers made us think in different strategies the college is working on or you can say number of processes being held. One of the major and most tiring jobs that is done manual is making course profile for each student and maintaining its records. Few major laws of college while making a course calendar for students kept in mind are detailed. Courseware Management System This student course calendar is used to make a helping guide or a course outline for what student is require to study and when, to complete successfully his/ her program. Different courses for professional field are taught in the college. Though there are many different fields. For example; BSCS, BBIT etc. For each filed there are number of different courses. Few courses are shared in the field of sciences. To complete each field; Studying 8 units is important. These 8 units are taught in two sessions in a year to complete professionalism in the field. Each 8 unit is of 10 credit points. In these 8 units; 6 core units and 2 elective units are fixed. Every year, Calendar of Courses and their respective units are maintained. Not only courses but their units and assigned instructors are also nourish. Going a bit in detail describes how each and every process works How the data is taken input and processed to other manipulations and evaluated till the end as a profile of the student Who uses it How it is used The following detail note from the research may reply to these questions. Higher administrative staff that has the knowledge of courses well makes this outline or calendar and decides for teaching; the instructors who can best teach each course available in the premises. The administration decides which course is important to study first and which to later. And though they make a prerequisite Course outline. Keeping all the above points and pre-requisite list in mind, administrators sit and consult the courses which are important to complete for the program. Now making an information system that automatically generates this outline; it has to keep checking all the points. Information System must have in database: List of programs offered in the college. List of courses to each program. (Note that each course is connected to a program that is while making a database course can be paired with the program) Number of units each course holds. (As this can be change later in years, so its better to hold it dynamically from database in code instead of hard-coding it and at time of maintenance opening each file to make the change in code.) Number of credit points each unit is of. (Similar to units this can vary in some later years.) Number of elective and core courses require to complete a program must also be defined. (Like above two they can also vary in later years.) There must be a column to against each course that gives the information if the course is elective or core. Course Pre-requisites with their ids must also be define as a different entity. Information telling course define this year or this session may taught by the instructor by making an entity holding course, date and instructor's id. To each course there must be a column of Current Enrolled Students for the particular session. Other to these characteristics, the information from Student information System is required and though database also keeps: Record of each student w.r.t the college id. (As it is already unique so no need to make a separate unique primary key.) To each id a course id that has been read with the grade achieves is recorded. (From the course id we can get the information if the course was elective or core.) An entity may require that holds student's current session information, i.e., which courses one has selected. (Through the course then we can find which instructor is teaching) These were few backend points to keep in mind while drafting a normalize database for Student Course Information System. If imagining the front end, there must be following different forms: Program Form This form allows maintaining different programs like BSCS, BBIT, etc. It takes input for the program name, its completion units and session required to complete the program. Course Form This form allows you to update course by giving name for new or course id that may be auto generated when new course is added. The course id must hold the basic program name in its first 3 initials then the numbers. There must be a drop down that allows choosing the program for which this course is being added. A drop down that shows the course is core or elective. A text field that allows entering the unit of the course and one for its fee charges. Pre-requisite Form It allows maintaining the pre requisites for each program. Instructor Form This is the form that maintains instructor's information like, one's name, qualification, experience, time availability in the college premises, salary, and number of different courses allotted or may assign. All above forms are major forms having adding, deleting, searching and editing options either in different forms or on the same form in different sections. The administrative staff uses these forms. Not only these forms completes the Student Course Information System but also providing forms to the students, to choose the course for their session. This is assumed that the student is enrolled in any of the program offered by the college and is checked every time from the database when student performs any action. Course Selecting Form A form that displays all the courses of that program student is enrolled in. The courses that student has successfully completed are in read only and others have the radio buttons to select. Successfully completing the course is resulted by calculating the units of course completed with the grade attained. If the grade is not F, the units are counted in the calculation of completed units. Moreover, all those courses in which the number of students enrolled is 10 are disabled. The Information System itself checks the already done courses and offers (enables) only those courses whose pre-requisites are done. As selection is made, the button for selecting the instructor enables to be clicked and Instructor Selecting Form appears. After all selections of the courses, the student clicks the submit button. The information System again checks if selected two courses are not of same level .If so, it returns error to select different else it opens the Enrollment Form. Instructor Selecting Form A form that opens against the course. A drop down shows the timing and the instructor selected for the course by system administrators. Students mark the selective radio button and press ok to get back to the Course Selecting form for other selections. Submission Form It gives the final details of all selections made by the student. Shows the course invoice. To final it, student enter the Print button and pay fee according to invoice for the enrollment else press Back button to change the selection on Course Selecting Form. This same invoice interacts to the financial system of the college for the fees. Course selecting form can be used within next two weeks to change the courses. Invoice for the enrollment courses will modify as require by the financial system. Instructor Guide Form Instructors are also one of the actors using this Information System. They need a form that allows them to view the list of courses they are assigned to teach in the current session. The timings and the units they teach and already taught. At time of enrollment, Instructor at any place can comment for rejecting the course for that session online on the same form. The course coordinators and system administrators are the one who uses forms to update programs, courses, student information and other activities in information system. Being more specific, system and its database should be created in a manner that it allows changes and extension of functionalities easily. Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) To develop the software; different processes is been performed. Despite many models, for this project Prototyping model. This set of processes can be named as software development life cycle. To every model there are 5 basic steps: Requirement Gathering Design Analysis Implementation Testing Installation Raymond Lewallen [MVP] (Software Development Life Cycle Model, n.d.) shows a very understanding pictorial view of software development life cycle. Requirement Gathering is almost done when the stakeholder receives the problem to automate in an information System. Analyzing the problem and extracting the requirements, designing its database and the prototypes covers the design phase. Coding the design to make the prototypes functional is suppressed by the implementation phase. Testing Process Testing process varies from organization to organization. To keep the standards different testing methods are been settled. But the basic testing process is the same. I.e., Feature Analysis, Preparation of Test Plans according to features while Development of the product by the developers. Implemented product is verified and bugs are analyzed. Product is thrown back to developers to improve and remove the bugs. Testing is done continuously till the product in hand best fits the client's requirements. In Software Testing book, a pictorial representation for testing process is done as follows: Quality Management Process Quality Assurance is actually a definite process performed by an entire team to assure the standard and procedures completely implemented as per requirements by the Client. This is the end process to check if the software is implemented to check all functionalities. Though the Quality Management process is a process that keeps the quality control on the project that is being developed in-house. For the testing this management prepares the test plans and test cases for the project. Standards Adopted Quality Checking keeps the standards for testing. They always take care for the process that is use to implement for decision making, designing, documenting, implementing, reviewing criteria. They maintain standards for company by taking strict actions on processing the phases of SDLC. Recruitment Practices Company recruits the senior, experience and professional persons for implementing the code for the project. They don't want to take risk for the project as it can robust their fame. Best Types of Testing Most well known and best fit for this project, testing models are as follows: Black Box Testing White Box Testing Unit Testing Integration Testing System Testing Stress Testing Black Box testing is to test if giving input is returning the right output or not, where as, white box testing is checking the code if input is driving correctly through out the code or not. Testing functionality separately before integrating is unit testing which proves the utility of the project. Integrating more functionality together is Integration Testing where as testing the whole system before deployment is System Testing. Integration Testing and System testing proves the reliability and correctness of the project. Using the system by more than one user is stress testing that verify the robustness and performance of the project. Conclusion The project all depends after designing phase on the Quality Control Engineers who act as Supervisor to the product. They test the processes while the project development yet also the documenting and team meeting styles. The Project before submission comes to Quality Assurance Engineers who test with different testing methods in a way that they want to destroy the project. This project must pass through to black box, white box, unit, integration, system and stress testing before the submission. Checking each and every requirement verified in the requirement specification document can easily do testing of the project. To check its internationalization, test the project on different operating system. References ENQA REPORTS (Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in European Higher Education Institutions, 19-20 May 2005). European Quality Assurance Standards. Raymond Lewallen (Software Development Life Cycle Model, n.d.). The General Model What is QA (For details visit http://www.sqa.net/) Applied Testing and Technology (ApTest Manager, January 14, 2007). Software Testing Glossary StylusInc (Stylus Systems Pvt. Ltd., n.d.). Software Development Life Cycle Document Guidelines (Software Management, n.d.). Software Life Cycle: The Staged Delivery Model Quality Management Process (Method123, 2003) Quality Management Kit Read More