Online University Course Registration and Grading System - Coursework Example

On-line University Course Registration and Grading System Executive Summary University has been using a paper based registration approach for registering the students to various courses. Online registration and grading system has the following advantages: Reduction in the number of mistakes made. It will also facilitate simple and fast retreival of information. Can facilitate report generation Students as well as other stakeholders will have a clear picture of pre-requisites and other information for a course. Students will not have to wait endlessly in queues to register for courses. With this system in place, students can view the offered courses for a semester, register online for courses, and view the results of past semesters. Administrator on the other hand can add/drop courses available, upload results, and can use this system to generate reports about the registration, and grades. Administrator will be handling the responsibility of managing student and professor information. Lecturers can use this system to indicate the subjects they will be teaching in a particular semester, add grades for a particular subject. Such a system is very useful for universities, and colleges. The target clients for such a system will be the universities with a large number of courses available. It will result in a decrease in errors, costs, and time. The system is designed in such a way that a student can’t change is course, once he has registered for a course. Besides, fees collection which is dependent on the courses taken is not taken care of by this system. Although a computer based system will reduce errors, but still human errors can’t be ruled out. User Requirements Data Flow Diagram A data flow diagram represents the flow of information and transformation of data that are applied to it as data move from input to output (Pressman, 2001). It is also known as data flow graph, or a bubble chart. It is a visual representation of the external entities, process, the data stores, and the data flows of a system (IIBA, 1.6, p.231). For the online registration and grading system, the eternal entities are the students, the lecturer, and the administrator. Data stores are storage area for passive data. The context level diagram shows the single process, and is further decomposed into more detailed processes to show higher level of DFDs. Context Level Diagram Student Data Course Details Use-Case Diagram Business Use-case diagram illustrates the scope of a business process. This is a graphical representation of the business actors (stakeholders), and the functions they request form the business (Podeswa, 2005, p49). Actor: An actor is the end-user of a system. Actors represent roles that users take on when they use the IT system (Sourcemaking, 2009) Student: A student may view available courses, register for a particular course, and view result for the past semesters. Administrator: Administrator may add/drop courses. S/he may modify the details for a particular course. Administrator will also be managing student and lecturer information. Lecturer: Lecturer will notify the subject s/he will be teaching in a particular semester. Lecturer will also be handling the addition of grades for the subjects he teaches The use cases for actor student are as shown below in the figure: The use cases for the actor Administrator is as shown below: The use case for lecturer will be as shown below: Use Case Description The following section describes all the use-cases. Pre-condition specifies the scenario when a particular use case may be initiated. Post condition is the state of the system after the successful implementation of the use-case. Exception flow is a path that the use case takes in case of an error condition. The activity diagram is a visual representation of activities and actions to describe workflows (Bennett et al, 2006) 1. Login 2. View Result 3. Register for a course The activity diagram for the use case is as below: 4. Select Course to teach 5. Add/Drop Course: This use case is used by the administrator to finalize the list of courses that will be taught in a particular semester. The activity diagram for the use case is as shown below: 6. Add grades for a subject The activity diagram for the activity “add grades” is as shown below: 7. Maintain student info: This use case is used by the administrator for either adding a new student, deleting an old student record, or updating the details of an existing student. Use Case Diagram The use case diagram after combining all the actors, and use cases is as shown below: Class Diagram A class diagram is a visual representation of the various classes and the relationship amongst them (Scott, 2001, p.32). Class diagrams can be anlysed in three different perspectives: conceptual, specification, and implementation (Fowler et al, 2001). A class is a templatefrom which objects are instantiated. They have attributes (Chich describe their state), and methods (which describe their behavior) (Ambler, 2009). Classes: Online university course registration and grading system: This is the home page for the system. It has the attribute: web address, and operation: start. Student Info: This class contains the information of the students such as the student ID, Student name, Address, login ID, and password. Lecturer Info: This class contains the information of the lecturers such as the staff ID, tenure, Type (Full time or Part time), login ID, password, and lecturer name. Administrator: It contains the login ID and password of the administrator. Grades: This class contains the details about the marks held by the students in various test for various subjects. It has an operation final grade that calculates the final grade of the students on the basis of the tests. Subject: This class contains the information about the various subjects on offer. Course: It has the attribute: Course ID, and course Name. It has operation add, drop, and if full. Besides these, the system also has 5 interfaces classes. Class Name Purpose Student Maintenance Form Used by the administrator to maintain student information Lecturer Maintenance Form Used by the administrator to maintain lecturer information Course Selection Form Used by lecturers to indicate the subjects they are willing to teach. Add/Drop Course Form Used by the administrator to add or drop a subject and maintain the course offering for a particular semester. Registration Form Used by the students to register for a particular course Associations The various classes have following associations amongst them: Students enroll for a course Lecturer teaches subject. Lecturer adds grades to subject. Student, lecturer and the administrator accesses the Online University Course Registration and grading system. Grades are of a subject The Online University Course Registration and grading system is related with the forms. The class Course is related to course selection, add/drop course, and registration form. The class Course is an aggregated instance of class subject. The class diagram for the system will look like: Sequence Diagram A sequence diagram represents the dynamic behavior of the system. It depicts the sequence of actions occurring in a system (Chitnis et al, 2009). It is used to show interactions amongst multiple objects. Rectangles are used to represent an object as well a class. Messages amongst classes are shown by horizontal arrows, with messages written on them (Exforsys, 2009). The sequence diagram for the use case: Add/Drop course is shown below: Use Case: Login Sequence Diagram Use Case: Select Course to teach Sequence Diagram Use Case: Register for a Course Sequence Diagram Database Design The database architecture for the system will look like this: Conclusion The online course registration and grading system described above is enough for handling basic functions of registering for courses, and adding grades to subjects in a university. With this system, lecturers may indicate the subjects they will be teaching in a particular semester, and add grades to the students for various subjects. The administrator can manage data about students, lecturers and courses using this system. The students can view the details of the courses available, can register for a particular course, and see result for the past semester. The system benefits the university in the way that, a lot of time, cost, and errors can be reduced with the new system. A lot of furher improvements can be made. The system can be expanded to include fees collection, and course catalogue management later. The security although sufficient at present can be expanded beyond a simple login ID/ password approach. References Ambler, S. W. 2009. UML 2 Class Diagram Guidelines. [Online] Avaiable: http://www.agilemodeling.com/style/classDiagram.htm#ClassGuidelines [7 June 2009] Bennett, A., McRobb, S., Farmer, A. 1999. Object-oriented Systems Analysis and Design Using UML, 3rd Edition. Berkshire, McGraw-Hill Education Chitnis, M., Tiwari, P., Ananthamurthy, L. 2009. Sequence Diagram in UML [online] Available http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/3080941 [3 June 2009] Exforsys Inc. 2009. UML Elements : Sequence Diagram [Online] Available: http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/uml/uml-elements-sequence-diagram.html [4 June 2009] Fowler, M. 2003: UML Distilled: A Brief guide to the standard object modeling language, 3rd Edition. Boston: Addison-Wesley 2000 International Institute of Business Analysis 2006, A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, Version 1.6, International Institute of Business Analysis, Toronto Podeswa, H. 2005. UML for the IT Business Analyst, Canada: Thomson Course Technology PTR. Pressman, R.S. 2001. Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s approach 5th Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education Scott, K., 2002. UML Explained, Indianapolis: Addison-Wesley. SourceMaking 2009. Use Case Diagram [Online] Avaiable: http://sourcemaking.com/uml/modeling-it-systems/external-view/the-elements-of-view/use-case-diagram [7June 2009] Read More