DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AUTOMATED SCHOOL FEES PAYMENT SYSTEM

(A CASE STUDY OSISA TECH POLYTECHNIC)

ABSTRACT

Online school fees payment system is a research work that will help build an effective information management system for Osisa polytechnic in the bursary department. The designed software will serve as a more reliable and effective means of paying school fees and removing all forms of delay and stress that is involved in the manual system of school fees processing. This project work made use of data collected from the Polytechnic library, and journals.  The aim of this project work is to achieve the following; to effectively and efficiently process students school fees payment and clearance, to provide a reliable and transparent system devoid of personal inclinations and interest and to provide borderless access to ensure prompt clearance. The implementation of the computer-based system was carried out using Dreamweaver  software. The result obtained from this work was to design an efficient system that will help to enhance the payment system of school fees without any inch so as to give room for accuracy and transparency. In conclusion, the work met all the objectives intended. It is, however, recommended for use by all tertiary institutions.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1            BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Our saviour Institute of Science Agriculture and Technology (OSISA TECH) Enugu is a private Polytechnic approved by the federal Government of Nigeria. It was officially opened on Jan 21, 1999 by the Federal minister for education, Prof . Oketi Ambrose.  It is the second catholic Polytechnic founded by Rev. Fr. Prof E.M.P Edeh. The school is managed by the congregation of Sisters of Jesus the Saviour, a religious congregation of nuns founded by him. The school operates the faculty system and presently has four faculties; Engineering, Environmental, Management and social sciences and natural science

    In this polytechnic, there is need for automated method of keeping data, more so a greater need for an online school fees payment system. This would go a long way in alleviating the various problems and stress involved in the manual method of school fees payment and clearance in the institution. Moreover, the issue of delayed youth service as a result of inability to complete the tedious manual process of clearance which involves school fees clearance would be curtailed when this new system is implemented.

Hence it became imperative for an online school fees system to eliminate the shortcomings of the manual system in place.

These days every sector is known with the word-computer. We can find computers at everywhere around us. In fact modern world will be incomplete without computers and their applications. It’s almost impossible to even imagine the modern facilities without the use of computers. For many individuals computer means PC, on which they can see movies, play games, prepare office sheets and manage daily planners. But this is just a page of the book of computers.

Computer means much more than a PC. A computer can simply be defined as a machine which takes instructions and perform computations and operations accordingly. These commanded instructions are known as programs and computers execute these programs to do an operation. At a time, a set of instructions can be given to a computer to perform several operations, simultaneously. This feature is a point of distinction for the computers.

Many types of computers are available these days. Depending on their usage and service application they can be classified in various categories. Supercomputers are capable of doing trillions of calculations in fraction of seconds, so they are used as controlling units of banking transactions; to keep records of railway, in schools to monitor school fees payment system in the bursary department and air transportations; to conduct decent flow of telecommunication and many more complex operations can be controlled, organized and conducted by using supercomputers.

On the other hand computers are also used in conducting simple operations like billing, ticket transactions, record maintenance, security analysis etc. And even computers (PC) are also used to do home based general activities like office sheet maintenance, day planner, entertainment etc. So computers are involved in every sector of life with different forms and different applications.

In modern word everything around us like GPS, ATM machines, cell phones, petrol pumps, portable play stations and all other modern devices use computer controlling units to conduct their featured operations. This simply implies that, when this new mode of operation is implemented in the bursary department of Our Saviour institute of Science, Agriculture and technology using computer the process will be efficient and free from error

1.2            STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The processes of manual school fees for student in the polytechnic has resulted to a lot of problems which makes student not to write exams on time because of the slow rate of processing the school fess from the bursary department was done manually. And sometimes lead to the misplacement of the school fees tellers because of lack of adequate storage medium.

1.3     OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objectives of this project include:

i.       To provide a reliable and transparent system devoid of personal inclinations and interest

ii.     To provide borderless access

iii.  To alleviate the problems and stress of travelling and queuing up of students during clearance in the bursary department due to manual process of school fees payment.

1.4     SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The project work will help in a good number of ways to ease the queuing system in the polytechnic as the online clearance and school fees payment system will help students to achieve what ever they want to achieve without coming to the various offices for clearance and fees.

The  Online school fees system will allows the students to check their school fees status if they are in any way indebted to the school, fill and submit their school fees form, and obtain their clearance form for that semester.

1.5    SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This research work is limited to school fees payment and clearance system for the student of Our Saviour Institute of Science Agriculture and technology. The software developed will be carried out using HTML, macromedia fire,  Dreamweaver and wamp server so as  to manage both the database and at the same time make the software online.

1.6     DEFINITION OF TERMS

Computer Network: Computer Network is a system that connects two or more computers together using a communication link. (Bufts 1989)

World Wide Web: World Wide Wed simply called www is the most important tool of the Internet. (Jeff 20010)

Clearance letter: Official certification of blamelessness, trustworthiness, or suitability for graduation and

issue of certificates in degree course. ( Gabreal 1990)                   

Databases:               A systematically arranged collection of computer data,

                                structured so that it can be automatically retrieved or

                                manipulated. It is also called databank. (Adoca 2001)

File Transfer:       Any kind of computer file can be sent via the Internet

                                from one Internet user to another. Table of accounts on

                              spreadsheets, design by a graphic artists, music sound

                              files etc, can all be exchanged in this way. (Smith 1999)

Web Brower:       This is a special kind of software that processes hypertext

                               make-up language (HTML) document. In other words, a

                              web browser is a computer program that interprets HTML

                                       command to collect, arranged and display the parts of a

                               web page. (Cleff 2000)

Web Site:  A website is a collection of many interconnected web pages

                 organized by a specific college, organization company etc,

                  containing web pages (good and commodities) on the Internet.

                  Web site are stored on web servers. There are many web site and

                 thousand of HTML pages on each web site. A web site is a

                 treasure of information and entertainment. ( Donald 1986)

 Hyperlinks: Hyperlinks are highlighted words and phrase you find on web

                    documents that you can click on as to jump to some other

                   documents or Internet services. ( Clex 1990)

Offline:       Disconnected from computer network; describes a computer

                    terminal or peripheral device disconnected from a computer

                    network. (Wikipedia 2011)

System:       Set of computer components that is, an assembling of hardware,

                    software and peripherals functioning together. ( Fans 2011)