DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR HIGHER LEARNING: A CASE STUDY IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN GHANA

The research aims at developing a simple, yet powerful integrated platform for integrating the various activities of institution, hence creating an environment that encourages accountability, relevance and retention of information gathered. Basically, the use of application software or automated systems to manage a school is synonymous to securing the routine activities of the school, the need to automate most of its operations by considering an Online Students’ Information Management System. This research therefore uses educational institutions as a case study.

Problem Addressed:
Most tertiary institutions in Ghana carry out some of their major operations manually, and there is no exception to this phenomenon. Institutions over the years, have been receiving application forms manually, though copies are available online and can be downloaded from the internet. Prospective students cannot complete application forms online; and this means there is no room for electronic data during student application. Student registration is another major concern of students in institutions. This is an activity which normally requires the physical presence of the student. Students therefore need to travel long distances to the school premises to perform registration exercises which pose a lot of inconvenience to themselves and the registrars.

Research Objectives & Research Questions:
The project aims at automating some manual and semi-automated students’ information systems to simplify and reduce the time needed for information and procedure management relating to different activities of educational institutions in Ghana. The primary objective of the study is to investigate the impact of Information Technology (ICT) on educational institutions, the benefits and drawbacks of having automated school systems.

Methodology:
The Rational Unified Process design methodology (RUP), which consists of four (4) phases; inception, elaboration, construction and transition has been considered as the most suitable for this study.

Research Results:
The client-server architecture for the proposed systems is a computing model that acts as a distributed application which partitions tasks or workloads between the providers of a resource or service, called servers, and service requesters, called clients. These clients and servers communicate over the network on separate computer hardware, but both clients and servers can reside in the same system. The server machine is the host that is running one or more server programs which share their resources with clients. A client on the other hand does not share any of its resources, but requests a server's content or service function. The resulting architecture of the proposed information management system for tertiary school students is as shown below. Many more results are provided in the main document.