A Proposed Online Grading Website with and Customer Service System

Introduction

Grading and reporting are relatively recent phenomena in education. Throughout much of the nineteenth century most schools grouped students of all ages and backgrounds together with one teacher in one-room schoolhouses, and few students went beyond college studies. The teacher reported students learning progress orally to parents, usually during visits of parents in their schools.

Grading System is designed to provide incentive reward for achievement and assist in identifying problems of the student. Grading System is the most commonly used in computing and analyzing the performance, talent and skills of the students, it is the important record to keep even for the longest time for the referral and credentials of the student to enter their next level of attaining their goals. It is the tract record that recognizes of one student, this maybe use for analyzing of your attitude and values. (Expand; discuss more about the grading system)

Most nations have individual grading systems unique to their own schools. However, several international standards for grading have arisen recently. Few issues have created more controversy (Discuss those issues). among educators than those associated with grading and reporting student learning. Despite the many debates and multitudes of studies, however, prescriptions for best practice remain elusive. Although teachers generally try to develop grading policies that are honest and fair, strong evidence shows that their practices vary widely, even among those who teach at the same grade level within the same school.

Grading and reporting serve a variety of purposes, but no one method serves all purposes well. Various grading and reporting methods are used to: (1) communicate the achievement status of students to their parents and other interested parties; (2) provide information to students for self-evaluation; (3) select, identify, or group students for certain educational paths or programs; (4) provide incentives for students to learn; and (5) document students’ performance to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs. Unfortunately, many schools try to use a single method of grading and reporting to achieve all of these purposes and end up achieving none of them very well. (Expand)

Letter grades, for example, offer parents and others a brief description of students’ achievement and the adequacy of their performance. But using letter grades requires the abstraction of a great deal of information into a single symbol. In addition, the cut-offs between grades are always arbitrary and difficult to justify. Letter grades also lack the richness of other, more detailed reporting methods such as narratives or standards-based reports. (Expand; we are not using letter grades in our school.)

The issues of grading and reporting on student learning continue to challenge educators. However, more is known at the beginning of the twenty-first century than ever before about the complexities involved and how certain practices can influence teaching and learning. To develop grading and reporting practices that provide quality information about student learning requires clear thinking, careful planning, excellent communication skills, and an overriding concern for the well-being of students. Combining these skills with current knowledge on effective practice will surely result in more efficient and more effective grading and reporting practices. (Remove the underlined sentence, and connect the problem with the client; Expand)

Statement of the Problem

The study deals with the manual encoding, submission and distribution of grades of the School. The professors have problems on conducting a meeting for passing grades. Sometimes problems on late passing of grades occur, as a result, the students have delays on getting their grades.

• Delay in the release of student grades.
• Long process of inquiry regarding grades that becomes inconvenient, tiresome, time consuming and costly for the students. • Improper and unsystematic information dissemination of important announcements to the students that leads to being uninformed. Unawareness of the parents in the academic standing of their child

Statement of the Research Objectives

The main objective of the study is to provide the ACLC College of Baliwag a Website that will help them to give its services more effectively and efficiently for the Students, Parents and by providing them more accurate information.

Specifically, the proposed website aims to:

• To fasten the distribution of cards.

• Allows the professors to input grades online.

• To show the grades of the students to their parents.

Significance of the Study

The study will be significant because of the expected use the technologies that will facilitate the operation of school and the disbursement of school information and services and it will aim to provide ACLC College of Baliwag a website that will enable them to establish connection with the admin, professors and especially on students by providing them essential information.

The study will be significant to both professor and students of ACLC College of Baliwag, because it will:

• It will simplify the task of the professors.

• It will make the previous system work much better.

• Allows these tasks to be performed efficiently with more convenience to users;

Provide the easy way for the professor and admins to lessen their works, and having less delay on passing the student grades.

More specifically the study will be significant to the following:

ACLC College of Baliwag: The school is expected to be the first to benefit in the proposed website. It will be significant for the school because it will provide opportunities to the professors to lessen their works and to avoid hustle on passing grades. Users: users (professors/students) will have good means of transactions, for professors, for them to have work in ease. And for students to look for their grades online, And through the website, users can also see announcements that admin will post.

Parents: Student grades can also access by parents, so they know if child is passing or not. They can also see what upcoming events that the school will post. Future Researchers: Future researchers are bound to benefit in which they can use this study as reference material. This study shares information to future researchers on how to develop an effective website, as well as the importance of a certain company having a website. Proponents: The proponents will be benefiting in this study, especially during the data-assessment process and website development. The proponents may acquire several skills that can be used for their future occupations in terms of dealing with the clients, as well as developing a website that may contribute to the IT industry.

Scope and Delimitation of the Study

The study deals with conceptualizing and building an Online Grading System for ACLC College of Baliwag. The proposed website will be used as a tool in which the school can use the online grading, instead of the previous system that they’re using. More specifically, the proposed website can fulfill the following functions: • It can be a reference of the students for the grades and other announcement or events of the school. • The parents can also see the grades of their child. • It can be a work tool, allowing a public agency to exchange information with its employees and/or other stakeholders in the organization, and therefore facilitate professional activity in general. • It can provide information that is essential for the school and also for the students and parents.

However, the function of the proposed e-government site will be limited in some aspect. The proposed website will mainly focus in promoting the municipality by providing relevant information about the town, such as latest news and events thus, other studies beyond the project scope will be disregarded. Specifically the proposed website expected to delimit the following: • The website is offline when the server is offline. • The viewers of the website need to install the software requirements to experience the full functionality of the website. • The system will not work if it doesn’t have prepaid-load. The flash objects in the website will not work if the flash player is not updated or installed.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter discusses the literature and studies which are related and have direct bearing to the proposed study. It consists of referenced information about websites, dynamic website, and importance of online grading system. (Where are the ff?: Review of Related Foreign Literature

Review of Related Local Literature
Review of Related Foreign Studies
Review of Related Local Studies)
(The theories should be related to the Grading System)

A. Internet Theory
What is the Internet? A Network of Network is internet. Network means Communication between two more computers using cables or other media devices like valves, satellite, and other electronic devices around the world, the largest network of networks in the world uses TCP/IP protocols and packet switching. It runs on any communications substrate. We can describe the Internet as a system operating in a certain environment. The Internet can be described as a communication system, consisting of certain components between which certain interactions are observable to an observer. The environment provides a structural coupling between the Net and its support from the environment. The environment “holds” the system and provides the relevant resources and supports to maintain the systems functions.

For instance, the supply of current, the computer hardware, the material cables of the telephone networks, the buildings in which the terminals are housed and of course the user is strictly part of the environment of the Internet. They are no components of the system itself. All communication systems are operationally closed systems. That simply means that no system can function outside the system. All communication takes place in the system and the only thing which can take place in the system is communication and nothing else. Therefore the Internet can be described as an auto-poetic system which produces the components out of which it exists out of the components of which it consists. The components are single communication units and they produce further communications (replies, answers, e-mail, discussions, news groups, etc.).

In this mechanism of continuous production and reproduction of the various components of the system selective interactions take place. Certain links between certain components are used more often than others. Through that process, which is a temporary, time-based mechanism, a certain actual structure is established in the Internet. The Internet offers cities new opportunities to communicate with their constituents at a time when metropolitan areas struggle with their community identity and cohesion. This study examined how official websites of the core areas represented their cities to the public as a whole, as well as how the cities communicated with their residents and visitors via these websites. A research paradigm was proposed to serve as the conceptual framework for empirical exploration, based on (Musso, Weare, and Hale’s 2000) dualistic model, by expanding it to include a “mass communication” model. Study findings revealed that the vast majorities of all sample sites contained high frequencies of information links to reflect all major communication functions. Internet marketing is now a major, multi-billion dollar industry. Despite some concerns, many consumers now have the skills and the confidence to transact purchases using the web.

All communication systems are operationally closed systems. That simply means that no system can function outside the system. All communication takes place in the system and the only thing which can take place in the system is communication and nothing else.

The Internet can be described as a system operating in a certain environment and as a communication system, consisting of certain components between which certain interactions are observable to an observer. The environment provides a structural coupling between the Net and its support from the environment. The environment “holds” the system and provides the relevant resources and supports to maintain the systems functions.

In this mechanism of continuous production and reproduction of the various components of the system selective interactions take place. Certain links between certain components are used more often than others. Through that process, which is a temporary, time-based mechanism, a certain actual structure is established in the Internet. The principal problem one has to face is the unobservability of the processes going on in the Net. The only way to observe interactions with a certain home page or server is the amount of electronic mail, the count of log-ins into a certain page or the number of subscribers to a e-magazine or a discussion group. So we can only talk in a highly selective perspective which depends on where we are located, when we look into the Net and how, about the actual structure of the Internet as accessible to a certain observer at a certain moment.

B. Operational Definitions (should be one sentence only, technical terms)

Web Technologies Study IT and choose a creative career in website management. Companies of all sizes need websites to gain new customers and maintain their current ones. A career in web technologies enables Mount graduates to develop a broad skill set in technical proficiency, interpersonal communications, and principles of web design. Telematics typically is any integrated use of telecommunications and informatics, also known as ICT (Information and Communications Technology). Hence the application of telematics is with any of the following:

• The technology of sending, receiving and storing information via telecommunication devices in conjunction with affecting control on remote objects. • The integrated use of telecommunications and informatics, for application in vehicles and with control of vehicles on the move. • Telematics includes but is not limited to Global Positioning System technology integrated with computers and mobile communications technology in automotive navigation systems. • Most narrowly, the term has evolved to refer to the use of such systems within road vehicles, in which case the term vehicle telematics may be used.

Social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

C. Conceptual Framework and IPO (Input-Process-Output) Diagram The Conceptual framework of this site focuses on the development of the Online Grading Website of ACLC College Baliwag. The diagram shows how the website was developed.

Input – It refers to the information, ideas, and resources that will be used in creating a website. This stage includes planning for the proposed project, gathering the necessary data and then analyzing.

Process – Inputting the required information will be done in this part to generate the dynamic website.

Output – This refers to the result of the process done. Testing will be done on this stage to detect errors and to finalize the requirements suitable for the desired results before implementing the software. The maintenance of the website is also done in this part.

D. Operational Framework
Rapid application development is a software development methodology that involves methods like iterative development and software prototyping. According to Whitten (2004), it is a merger of various structured techniques, especially data-driven Information Engineering, with prototyping techniques to accelerate software systems development.

In rapid application development, structured techniques and prototyping are especially used to define users’ requirements and to design the final system. The development process starts with the development of preliminary data models and business process models using structured techniques. In the next stage, requirements are verified using prototyping, eventually to refine the data and process models. These stages are repeated iteratively; further development results in “a combined business requirements and technical design statement to be used for constructing new systems”.

RAD approaches may entail compromises in functionality and performance in exchange for enabling faster development and facilitating application maintenance.

Rapid Application Development (RAD) Model is a software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The “planning” of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself. The lack of extensive pre-planning generally allows software to be written much faster, and makes it easier to change requirements. The RAD approach encompasses the following phases:

Figure 2.2 Rapid Application Development (RAD) Model (THE FIGURE IS VERY COMMON IN THE INTERNET, REVISE IT)
1. Requirements planning phase combines elements of the system planning and systems analysis phases of the System Development Life Cycle. Users, managers, and IT staff members discuss and agree on business needs, project scope, constraints, and system requirements. It ends when the team agrees on the key issues and obtains management authorization to continue. 1. User design phase during this phase, users interact with systems analysts and develop models and prototypes that represent all system processes, inputs, and outputs. The RAD groups or subgroups typically use a combination of Joint Application Development (JAD) techniques and CASE tools to translate user needs into working models.

User Design is a continuous interactive process that allows users to understand, modify, and eventually approve a working model of the system that meets their needs. 2. Construction phase focuses on program and application development task similar to the SDLC. In RAD, however, users continue to participate and can still suggest changes or improvements as actual screens or reports are developed. Its tasks are programming and application development, coding, unit-integration and system testing. 3. Cutover phase resembles the final tasks in the SDLC implementation phase, including data conversion, testing, changeover to the new system, and user training. Compared with traditional methods, the entire process is compressed. As a result, the new system is built, delivered, and placed in operation much sooner. Its tasks are data conversion, full-scale testing, and system change over, user training.

Another version of RAD phases:

• Business Modeling: The information flow among business functions is defined by answering questions like what information drives the business process, what information is generated, who generates it, where does the information go, who process it and so on. • Data Modeling: The information collected from business modeling is refined into a set of data objects (entities) that are needed to support the business. The attributes (character of each entity) are identified and the relation between these data objects (entities) is defined. • Process Modeling: The data objects defined in the data modeling phase are transformed to achieve the information flow necessary to implement a business function. Processing descriptions are created for adding, modifying, deleting or retrieving a data object. • Application Generation: Automated tools are used to facilitate construction of the software; even they use the 4th GL techniques. • Testing and Turn over: Many of the programming components have already been tested since RAD emphasizes reuse. This reduces overall testing time. But new components must be tested and all interfaces must be fully exercised.