College Student Allocation System

Universiti Teknologi MARA College Student Allocation System BY ASMAHANIBINTIMOHD ZIN THESIS SUBMITTED IN FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONS) INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND QUANTITATIVE SCIENCE APRIL 2007

APPROVAL COLLEGE STUDENT ALLOCATION SYSTEM BY ASMAHANIBINTIMOHD ZIN This thesis was prepared under the direction of thesis advisor, Mrs. Sofianita Mutalib, Department of Systems Science, and it has been approved by thesis supervisor, Mr. Saharbudin Nairn Tahir Shah. It was submitted to the School of Information Technology and Quantitative Sciences and Quantitative Science and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science (Hons) Information Technology. Approved by: Mr. Saharbudin Nairn Tahir Shah Thesis Supervisor Mrs. Sofianita Mutalib Thesis Advisor Date: April 2007

DECLARATION I certify that this thesis and the research to which it refers are the product of my own work and that any ideas or quotation from the work of other people, published or otherwise are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referring practices of the disciplme APWL, 2007 ASMAHANIBINTIMOHDZIN 2005619595 111

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With the name of Allah the most Gracious, the most Merciful creator, I seek His Blessing on His Prophet Muhammad s.a.w All praise and glory be to Allah S.W.T whose infinite generosity has given me the strength to complete thisfinalproject in time. My smcere gratitude, thanks and most appreciation goes to Encik Saharbudin Nairn bin Tahir Shah as my supervisor, Puan Sofianita binti Mutalib as my thesis coordinator and my course tutor Puan Nor Aziah binti Daud for their guidance, encouragement, comments and references. They are such a great person who has paved the way for me throughout the overall research project. I would also like to express my grateful thanks to all my colleagues for their opmion, suggestion and cooperation they gave. Also thanks for their morale support during the months I spent preparing thisfinalproject. To my beloved parents and fmnily, who are always there for me whenever I need them and million of thanks for all the supports, blessing, loves andfinancialsupport they give to me. Finally, to whom I failed to mention, who directly contributed to this project. Thank you very much. IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENT APPROVAL DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF APPENDICES ABSTRACT PAGE ii iu iv v vii vii vii viii CHAPTER 1: RESEARCH OVERVIEW 1.1 Background of Research 1 1.2 Problem Statement 2 1.3 Research Objectives 2 1.4 Research Scope 3 1.5 Significance of Research 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction 4 2.2 Information System 4 2.3 College Management 6 2.4 Student Management 8 2.5 Object Oriented Methodology 10 2.6 Web Technology 12 2.7 Software Requirement Specification 17 2.8 Mamboserver 19

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research study and problem statement 23 3.2 Knowledge Acquisition 23 3.3 Data Analysis 24 3.4 Knowledge representation or design 25 3.5 Implementation 25 3.6 Sampling Design 26 3.5 Hardware and software 27 3.5 Summary 27 CHAPTER 4: CONSTRUCTION 4.1 Requirement Specification 28 4.1.1 Use case 28 4.1.2 System Layout 31 4.1.2.1 Confirmation Online Tem 31 4.1.2.2 Entering Data 32 4.1.2.3 Manage Student Application 32 4.1.2.4 View Result 33 CHAPTER 5: ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 5.0 Introduction 34 5.1 CSAS Specification Formalization 34 5.1.1 User Requirement 34 5.12 Flow and Features of CSAS 35 5.1.3 Research Findings 35 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION 6.1 Conclusion 61 6.2 Limitations and Constraints 62 vi

5.3 Recommendation 62 REFERENCES APPENDICES LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE PAGE 1 Image abstract information system S 2 Architecture diagram of web technology 12 3 The architecture of the Apache web server 15 4 Research Methodology 22 5 Use cases 28 6 Confirmation Online Term 31 7 Entering Data 32 8 Manage student Application 32 9 View Result 33 10 Gender 36 11 Semester 36 12 Course 37 13 Faculty 38 14 College 39 15 Family Income 39 16 State of Origin 40 17 Using Internet 41 18 The reason using internet 42 19 The number of year using Internet 43 20 The place get Internet access 44 21 The online college registration 45 22 The manual or traditional 46 23 level of student satisfied 47 vu

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 College Activity Facilities Reason apply college Distance Allocated Duration The way apply college Frequent apply college Duration of result Activities Activity by University Activity by Club Activity by College The best way used in college application 48 49 50 51 52 53 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 LIST OF APPENDICES APPENDIX A APPENDIX B APPENDIX C APPENDIX D APPENDIX E APPENDIX F User Mmiual Software Requirement Specification Questionnaire Interview Mutual Aggreement Meeting Supervisor viu

ABSTRACT This research project is about developing College Student Allocation System using Wampserver and web application framework in UiTM. The objectives of this research are to identify all the requirement specification of College Student Allocation System (CSAS), to model the design of College Student Allocation System (CSAS) based on requirement specification and to develop the prototype of the College Student Allocation System adopting web application framework that is Mamboserver. The researcher gets the data collection from tfie interview and questionnaire to gather all the requirement that are needed in this research said prove the findings at the end of the reseeu'ch. In the end of research project period, researcher found that the result is complying with the objectives and therefore all the objectives in this research project have been achieved. IX

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter provides the background of the research. It also discussed about the problem statement, research objective, research scope and significance of research. 1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE RESEARCH Student college allocation issues arise in Universiti Teknologi Mara. This is because of the increasing number of students that furthering their study at UiTM. Only the first year students get the priority to stay in college, while the rest are depending on the number of vacancies in each college. Nowadays UiTM is using manual method for college application. The process is that students must fill up the forms provided by college officer. It is the Student's Affair Officer (HEP) responsibility to handle students' college application. Some of tlie criteria that enable students to stay in college are; the merit they get wdien joining college activities, families' background, and the first year students. Problem arises when Student Affair Office (HEP) needs more time to process the college applicationfi-omstudent and produce the result. Besides that HEP needs more staff to covmt and choose the right student that can stay to the college for the next semester. Students also were placed in the college that is far awayfi-omtheir faculty. Some of them don't have transportation. So, its become a problem to the student to attend the class early. Various methods are suggested to overcome these college allocation problems. One of the suggested methods is by using online college registration. Students need to fill up the online forms and the staff enter total student activity after that the system will

automatically place them to the appropriate college. The system makes decision according to the certain criteria like total activity and family income. 1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT Here are the traditional methods in firstly students must get the college application forms from the college officer. Next students must fill up the forms. The due date for the application is fixed. They must attach together their passport size photo, and their parents' monthly salary slips. The HEP officer's faces difficulties to process the application forms. The process of key in the data takes a longer tune and it all done by manually. The officer need to check each student's college application in determining which students qualified to stay in college for the next semester. The students were placed randomly in colleges. Some of them were placed far away from their faculties. These situation give trouble to them.especially for those who don't have any transport to reach their classes. 1.3 OBJECTIVES The objectives of the study have been identified as follows: a) To identify all the requirement specification of College Student Allocation System (CSAS). b) To model the design of College Student Allocation System (CSAS) based on requirement specification.

c) To develop the prototype of the College Student Allocation System adopting web application. 1.4 PROJECT SIGNIFICANCE The significances of the research are: This research will propose an alternative to HEP as the organizations that involve in allocate the students to the college as well as highlighting the advantages of implementing college student allocation system fi-om the aspect of online practice. This research is usefiil to compel the development of the system by uising nonproprietary application for lowering the total cost of ownership. The components of this non-proprietary application then could be optimized to meet the system requirement. This research will also lead to a solution enabling faster coordination of the research between students, HEP and college. This research can provide a new and easy way to apply and allocate college, less time needed and more saving in term of cost. This research is an improvement of the college student allocation system to make it more effective in college management. 1.5 SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH The scope of the research is focuses on the students at different faculty and different college in University Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Shah Alam. There are fifteen faculties in University Teknologi Mara (UiTM). Some of the colleges are located near by the faculties. The project is focusing on the colleges that situated nearby the faculties such as, Melati, Seroja, Mawar, Perindu, Delima and Teratai College.

CHAPTER! LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 INTRODUCTION This literature review would provide a study on the college student allocation system. As the technology become part of human life, there are so many applications that have been developed to make one's life easy. Nowadays, many systems will develop to make the user easy to do their work example system e-laundry to produce the receipt, system inventory and etc. The system that wants to build is the college student allocation system. These systems are responsible to allocate all the student that apply college based on their merit for college activity, first year student, family backgroimd and course. Before this, students are using manually to apply college and HEP are responsible to allocate the student at college without consider student courses but allocate them at every college that are not full. 2.2 INFORMATION SYSTEM An information system consists of three components human, task and application system. In this view, information is defined in terms of the three levels of semiotics. Data which can be automatically processed by the application system corresponds to the syntax-level. In the context of an individual who interprets the data they become information, which correspond to the semantic-level. Information becomes knowledge when an individual knows and evaluates the information example for a specific task.

This corresponds to the pragmatic-level. From Wikipedia, In general systems theory, an information system is a system, automated or manual, that comprises people, machines, and or methods organized to collect, process, transmit, and disseminate data that represent user information. According to John Cooper, Jane Sullivan, (2003), failure of the information systems can cause a major loss of service, and so their dependability is a major concern. Current facets of dependability, such as reliability and availability, do not address the needs of critical information systems adequately because they do not include the notion of degraded service as an explicit requirement. Some background material about critical information systems is helpful in understanding the need for a precise notion of survivability and how it differs from other notions of dependability. RCJECTIOM Figure 1: Image: Abstract Information System According to 2^hman J.A., (1987), the subject of information systems architecture is beginning to receive considerable attention. The increased scope of design and levels of complexity of information systems implementations are forcing the

use of some logical construct (or architecture) for defining and controlling the interfaces and the integration of all of the components of the system. On the assumption that an understanding of information systems architecture is important to the development of a disciplined approach, the question that naturally arises is "What, in fact, is information systems architecture?" Unfortunately, among the proponents of information systems architecture, there seems to be little consistency in concepts or in specifications of "architecture," to the extent that the words "information systems architecture" are already losing their meaning! Furthermore, it probably is not reasonable to expect reconciliation or commonality of definition to emerge from the professional data processing community itself. According to Couger John, (1973), the information systems development process is viewed as consisting of analysis, design, and implementation phases, prior to the operation phase. These phases do not ordinarily take place strictly in the order given but rather exist together in a continuing pattern of interaction. The development of information systems then consists of an iterated process of information analysis, system design, and implementation. This "system life cycle," it has been pointed out, applies to other kinds of development effort as well. 2.3 COLLEGE MANAGEMENT The college is very fortunate in the quantity and the range of the accommodation it has available to offer its graduate students. All graduate housing is of a very high standard and most has been either built or refiirbished in recent years. Priority is given to the first year graduate students and merit from the college activity that students involve. According to Lau Chi Pang, Wong Wan Man (1998), the Birth of Student Hostel: Whole Person Education at the Formative Stage, Lingnan College is the first tertiary institution in Hong Kong to provide opportunities for all students to live and work together in an

academy community and to realize more fully the ethos of the college as reflected in its motto "Education for Service", Lingnan College is currently offered 1,500 hostel places to their student which is about 75% of the total student population. According to Downing College, Graduate students in college accommodation live either in college or in graduate hostels which are close by as their studies usually require them to remain in Cambridge for virtually the whole year. Graduate are able to participate as fully in college life as all other members. Cooking is not allowed in the room including storing, preparing, cooking or consume food to prevent smell and pest nuisance. Any damage to hostel property must be reported immediately to the hostel management. Residents will have to pay for all damages except those caused by normal wear and tear. There are more than ten colleges at UiTM to allocate their student but it still will not enough to allocate their entire student. Therefore, Student Affairs Office must select the students based on the criteria that Student Affairs Office decide to choose students that are qualified to stay at college along their study at UiTM. According to Mark Drunmiond, a service requirement for graduation that program is effective because it integrates the service component into the curriculum, which can be quite costly. The good condition of college is very important to give comfort to the entire students that have opportunity to stay at the college. The facilities such as light, cafe and room that provided by the college must be in good condition. The hostel management must taking take of welfare of their students. According to Foubert, Tepper and Morrison, (1997), Physical environment and social factors are the two main factors contribute to student satisfaction with the residence hall experience. According to Stange, (1991), Physical features of a residence hall such as architectural design, space.

amenities and location of campus have shown to impact on student's satisfaction with their hall. Physical factors such as light, noise, temperature and air quality also have powerfully influenced overall satisfaction with an environment. The hostel management reserves the right to match those twin sharing residents without a room-mate with same gender. Any damages to room facilities will be shared equally with the room mate. The hostel management reserves the rights to enter, inspect or spot checks the rooms in the interest of proper conduct of the residents, or the orderly and efficient administration and proper use of the rooms, or to maintain or repair the premises but only in the presence of the residents. Unless time permits, a written notification shall be given in advance of the management's intended entry. According to Austin, (1984), several researchers have explored the relationship between residence hall living and satisfaction with the college experience. Researcher has demonstrated that physical environment and social factors can have a substantial impact on student's satisfaction with their residence hall experiences. Residence hall experiences, in turn, have shown to have positive impact on student perceptions of their imdergraduate experiences, mendships and faculty student relations. 2.4 STUDENT MANAGEMENT According to Marvish, (2003), Student Information Management System (SIMS) is a student-level data collection system that allows the department to collect and analyze more accurate and comprehensive information, to meet federal and state reporting requirements, and to inform policy and programmatic decisions. Student Information Management System provides the complete information and management for the students, parents, faculties, and other staffs of the institution. Some of the features of the Student Information Management System for management are provide management information for decision making, provide easily accessible information for 8

all appropriate, provide information that is accurate, consistent, timely, reliable, and complete, reduce administrative costs, provides information about new management policies, fee structure, date of payment, new rules and helps management keep track of profiles and performance of all students in the institutions. These are some recommendations which merit further consideration, though they cannot yet stand on their own and these are identified in the attached analysis. Students have a range of choice in the room's allocation system. First-years fill in a form that provided by UiTM before arrival, indicating the rent band of the room they would prefer. They also can contact Student Affair Office if they need house to rent and not interested to stay at the college or maybe college did not provide to them. According to Downing College, (2006), Downing gives priority to the accommodation of first year graduate students and overall it is able to house around half of its total graduate population. Graduate students in college accommodation live either in college or in graduate hostels which are close by as their studies usually require them to remain in Cambridge for virtually the whole year. Graduates are able to participate as fully in college life as ail other member. Residents are responsible for the up-keep of cleanliness and tidiness of their rooms at all times including the common areas in the hostel, such as the loimge area, pantry and bathrooms for the convenience of the next users. No residents are allowed to make alterations or damage to the premises or to remove any fittings. Anyone caught violating this rule will be subjected to appropriate charges and action where deemed necessary by the management. Residents sharing common facilities within the room of the residence shall be liable for a joint payment towards the cost of repair or loss of facilities within the room in the event that such damage or loss is not attributable to a single resident. According to Katong, (2005), All students must read and are expected to abide by the following rules and regulations. Any student who fails to comply with any

of these rules and regulations shall be subjected to disciplinary action and may be EVICTED from the residence by the Management. Any balance of the accommodation fees will be forfeited and students will have to pay damages where applicable. Assist students in representing themselves and their interest in the most effective manner possible. Provide support to students, enabling them to develop identification with the college through cultural, educational, social, recreational and training programs. Advocate for students on various campus committees. Encourage faculty and staff to be supportive of students and their co-curriculum activities. Assist students in developing skills that enable them to accomplish their co-curriculum goals. Advocate for student interests within student activities and the college as a whole by provide a student perspective in student activities training and general policy development and work with students to initiate new student organizations. 2.5 OBJECT ORIENTED METHODOLOGY The object-oriented approach is a fundamentally different view of information system that found in the traditional structured approach. According to Jeffrey Brewer & Leslie Lorenz, The world of software development and system integration continues to evolve into an object-oriented based environment. A methodology formally defines the process that the researcher use to gather requirement, analyze them and design an application that meets them in every way. A methodology can also be defined as the physical implementation of the logical life cycle. The categories of diagram are use case diagram, class diagram, behavior diagrams including state chart diagram and activity diagram, interaction diagrams including 10

sequence diagram and collaboration diagram and implementation diagram including component diagram and deployment diagram. According to John J. Donovan, Traditional intuitive methods of decision-making are no longer adequate to deal with the complex problems faced by the modem policymaker. Thus systems must be developed to provide the information and analysis necessary for the decisions which must be made. These systems are called decision support systems. Decision support systems have been developed to provide the information and analysis necessary for the decisions that must be made. While database systems lie at the heart of decision support system tools, the characteristics of the problems associated with decision support are different from those to which database systems and other computational technologies have usually been applied in the past. Most applications of database systems and computer-based information systems have been aimed at operational control or management control in organizations, and therefore the major concerns of such systems have been at low levels, dealing primarily with raw data. With a decision support system, data analysis needs are more important. Furthermore, mechanisms must be included for quickly adapting to the changing nature of problems, for assimilating new data series, and for integrating existing models and programs in the effort to save time in responding to a particular decision maker's request. Hence computational technology as applied to ACM Transactions on Database Systems, Vol. 1. No. 4, December 1976. 11

2.6 WEB TECHNOLOGY MySQL Replication Master(Write) MySQL Replication Slave (readonlv) Figure 2: Architecture diagram of Web Technology 2.6.1 PHP According to article from Quick Start Copyright 2005, PHP is commonly used, simple, yet powerful Web Server scripting language used for embedding dynamic content into HTML Web pages. PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. 12

PHP is a server-side scripting language. What distinguishes PHP from something like client-side JavaScript is that code is executed on the server. This means that the server executes your script and translates the content to HTML before sending it to your Web browser. All of the heavy lifting and computing is done on the server. Using PHP and MySQL database, we can create robust Web sites that generate content and images dynamically. According to Mike McGrath in his book "PHP in Easy Step" say, PHP offer speed of execution using only meager system resources so will not slow down the host machiue. It uses its own resource management system, and has a sophisticated method for handling variables, thereby ensuring stability. PHP provides many levels of security which can be set in its initialization file to the desired level. Its simplicity allows anyone with just basic knowledge of HTML to start integrating PHP into their pages straight away. PHP modular system provides extensibility that allows it to interface with different libraries, such as encryption, graphic or XML, and adding further extensions is very simple. PHP can be downloaded from v\ w w plip.nct. According to Md. Ashraftil Anam, PHP is a robust, server-side, open source scripting language that is extremely flexible and actually fun to learn. PHP is also cross platform, which means your PHP scripts will run on Unix, Linux or an NT server. 13

2.6.2 APACHE According to Mike McGrath in his book "PHP in Easy Step" say, Apache is the world's most popular web server which, according to a recent survey, accounts for 56% of all web servers worldwide. It can be freely downloaded from htlpil'hltpvlmpkiv'b»-'a>rg- According to Fielding T.R, (1995), The HTTP server project is the Apache Group's main project. This collaborative software development effort is aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, feature and freely available. This server is well known as "the Apache". The volimteers are there known as "the Apache Group". In February 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the public domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign. However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in mid 1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and but fixed that were in need of a common distribution, A small group of these webmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose or coordinating their changes. The Apache web server has remained under continuous development during the past few years. As of April 2000, the Apache developers were actively working on Apache 2.0, which will provide multithreading under UNIX Operating System (UNIX) together with lots of smaller enhancements and changes. This change will allow Apache to scale better, require less system resources and perform more quickly compared to the pre-forked process model 14

of Apache 1.3. Before a 2.0 release version is stable enough for production environments, however, at least one more year will certainly pass. According Stein, L. and MacEachem, D., (1999), Apache is very complex web server, mainly because of the vast number of features provided. Fortunately, most of this functionality stays in clearly separated and independent program modules, which facilitates program understanding and maintenance. Figure 3.0 depicts Apache's program architecture. This layering architecture consists of four layers, which are built on top of one another. >^ ^ B s. o "C a> AM Third-party libraries used by Apache modules 3 t! { 1' B } Additional functionally (optional) «Apache Keifui Basic functionality (essential) Operating System Platform functionality Figure 3.0 The architecture of the Apache web server 15