INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS ONLINE PORTAL (iSOP)

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Online student system has become an important factor in modern education field and it is also known or know as a portal. This system should help the institutional to streamline the administrative task and provide real-time access to the data. Building this system in web-based interface will further help the ease of accessibility through any web browser. This chapter will provide a brief understanding about the field for the project, where the project will be executed and the current problem that they face in managing student (international) information. The study findings and reviews enable its objectives, scopes and advantages of the international students online system. This chapter will also cover some of the project plan and deliverables.

Field of study

The proposed system will be implemented and be used by AIMST Universitys international student office administrators and the current student studying at the university. There are various students across the globe currently pursuing their studies in AIMST University; the system will serve as an agent of change to the student and the international office administrators. The population of the student is dramatically increasing in recent years. Some times information is difficult to circulate or passed to other students.

Overview of the System to be developed Previously theres no any portal for the international students. The program documentation and record has been compiled in spreadsheet format and not centralized. The information is not easily accessible either by the student or staff. The records are becoming difficult to manage after the gradual increase of international students in recent years. Among the data that need to manage properly are student records, subject list, student grades, passport information, students attendance, fees status, chat room and program schedule. The overall system to be built has two characteristics, first of all is to help the AIMST international student department in managing student records, to help students in interacting with each other and also communicate with the international department.

Problem statement
Most of the learning institution incorporate student with a portal for aiding their students have interact and personalize their own online portal page. AIMST international administration should have international students online portal, of some sort, which will provide information about their profile, the current course and subjects that they are taking, announcement or bulletin posted by the international office Administrators of related courses regarding their academics scheme of work and send information to international students, perhaps pass interactive chat rooms for the students and the administration to communicate. In other words, this site facilitates the AIMST international students in their academics and in non-academic fields. Hence the name international students online portal (iSOP).

How a portal can help

With a customized community web portal you can: Increase student engagement. Give students easy ways to connect

with their professors and their peers to get them more engaged in their classes. Facilitate anytime, anywhere learning. Provide your students with single sign-on access to learning materials and campus resourcesfrom library content to complete online coursesat any time, from virtually anywhere, and from any type of connected device. Youll create a virtual campus that never closes. Make better decisions. Inform routine decisions and long-range strategic planning across all business functions and disciplines with accurate, readily available data presented in intuitive and familiar formats. Let faculty focus on research and instruction. Make it easier for your faculty to find instructional resources; assess students; record and track grades; and communicate with their colleagues and students, and they will have more time and energy to focus on important research and facilitate meaningful learning experiences that meet the unique needs of individual students. Streamline administrative tasks. Make it easy for students to register for classes, access financial aid information, pay their tuition, sign up for lunch programs, report absences, and more from any computer. Connect with your community. By proving simple and customized ways to access information and connect with your institution, you can reap the benefits of strong connections with alumni and other members of the broader community.

Scope The main target user of this system will be for all the students currently studying in the University and also the international students department. Both will have different levels of access privilege to limit their access to the ones that are meant for them. The iSOP basically will facilitate both the University management and students in the process of communication and also to interact with each other. The international office, can easily provide necessary information, notifications as well as announcement on about the academics curriculums, such as class attendance, examination status and passport expiry date announcement and any relevant information to the students.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

There is a need to provide an application independent mechanism for switching information between information providers and requestors. This requirement has generalized the traditional many-to-one client-server relation into a many-to-many client-server relation. Inevitably, an information explosion is introduced on the web. Many web users are frustrated in dealing with the overwhelming information bombardment. To solve the problem, the Portal as a packaged piece of information is used for delivering the right information to

the right person, at the right time, to the right place, to make the right decisions [Li 2000a & 2000b].

Portal Properties
The international students online system (iSOP) has the properties of selfservicing, personalization, and real- time delivery. For personalization, a user would be able to use pre-defined templates to re-design personalized his/her portal page. In this case every international student will create portal page. The students for the login into their portal page will create unique access codes and usernames; the international student administrators will also have unique access codes. The individual student can modify their portal page according to personal interests. For self-servicing, a user would be able to deliver and receive information that is dedicated to the person. For real-time delivery, iSOP is used as a messaging tool to deliver instant messages to an individual or at the same time to group of students.

Benefits of having iSOS Going online for academic and non-academic purposes is no longer a fad but is needed to reach more students at lower cost and with better materials. In a short span of time, online communication and interaction has become popular not only with administrators but also with students because not only does it offer students flexibility in having real time communication and information and keeping them up to date, it gives them access to relevant information wherever and whenever. There are numerous reasons why educational institutes should have iSOP but only a few are listed here:

It is convenient. Because of ease of use and access of information from anywhere will make iSOP more convenient. All information is available and accessible through the web anytime.

It is consistent in content delivery since the same material is delivered to every recipient. With consistent knowledge available, everybody can work towards a common goal and learn the same material.

The academic outlines can be updated anytime due to changes in the content or updating of technology and services. The information can be changed immediately, and updated and made accessible to users.

The students can have access to specific information that is not accessible to other people.

Users can view material specific to their requirements and get information and results.

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

METHODOLOGY

In this chapter I will explain and discuss the methodology that is going to be used to carry out the research for the international students online portal (iSOP). There are some techniques that can be used to check the system that is being used in other to find the problems of current system if theres any and focused on how to solve the problems.

Observation I have searched and reviewed some of online portals which are being used by some of the universities like Harvard, Sunway university and Uitm students portals, I observed some important aspects of the portals and areas where there is need to make changes.

DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY

Prototyping Is the process of building a working replica of the iSOP by performing analysis, design, and implementation phases concurrently and repeatedly until the system is completed. Prototyping can actually improve and enhance the quality of requirements and specifications provided to the developers because changes cost a lot and they are detected earlier and early determination of what users require results into faster and less expensive software.

Requirement Planning Planning phase is the fundamental process of understanding why the portal should be built, and how will it be built. During Project initiation the iSOP value is identified. The iSOP request performs a brief summary of the needs, and it explains how the iSOP that supports the need will create more values.

Hardware Recommendations

Software Recommendations

Desktop or Personnel computer (pc)

Window xp, vista and other operating systems platforms.

Routers (wireless) and LAN Cables

xCode, Microsoft office, Photoshop suite, Mysql, Visio, JavaScript and other Authoring tools.

External memories

Minimum of 1Gb RAM and 50gb hardisk

space

CHAPTER 4 PROJECT DISCUSSION

This chapter is devoted to discuss about the iSOP project that being implemented using methodology. The discussion will much revolve around software process of iSOP project consisting activities started with System Requirement Analysis, followed by Software Design, System Implementation and Integration.

System Requirement Analysis The first task in iSOP Software Process is to capture and analyze system requirement. This section will elaborate more about the steps involved and the output of the activity performed. Relevant example from the iSOP project is taken to clarify the discussion. For ease of understanding, this section has been divided into few subsections as follows:

Requirement Gathering All possible requirements of the system to be developed are captured in this phase. Most of the requirement has been gathered via series of discussion with the international officer and some students. Interview with few administrative officers working with the international office. Actors that represent who use the system and Use Case that represent what the system will offer has been identified. The next step will be to construct the Use Case Model.

Use Case Model Use Case model is a model of the system intended function (use case) and its surroundings (actor). Functional requirement has been identified and high-level use case diagram has been constructed. Figure below depict the use case diagram. There are 4 functions that a student can perform which is Login into to the system, view the subject list, View Result and View schedule. The Administrator has 6 functions that he can perform which are Login into the system, Manage Student record, Manage subject Record, Manage Student Result, Manage Schedule and Manage Admin record. Rational Rose has been used through out the modeling phase.