An online students’ projects / dissertations information system for Makerere University

Abstract

With over 30,000 undergraduate students pursuing different courses, Makerere University is faced with the challenge of storing completed project reports / dissertations for undergraduate students. Currently the existing system for storing final year project reports / dissertation for undergraduate students is manual, bulky, expensive and time consuming. Project reports / dissertations are stored in decentralized book banks making them difficult to access for improvement, knowledge enhancement or to be used for literature review. Therefore, it was necessary to carry out research on the existing system for handling the management of the undergraduate students‟ project / dissertation reports in order to come up with an automated system for management of final year undergraduate project / dissertation reports. Study of the existing system was carried out through administering questionnaires to undergraduate students and interviewing the research office staff. This led to a better understanding of the existing system and refined user requirements. It is from these requirements that the system specifications were outlined and the system design developed based on them. The system design was then implemented using PHP scripting language, MySQL and HTML using a file server architecture, with the database and file directory running on the server and the interfaces running on the client personal computer. As the quest for quality research increases, Makerere University needs to embrace technology for students while conducting research by adopting the Online Students‟ Projects / Dissertations Information System.