Result Notification System using Short Message Service

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

We are living in the era of information revolution, with a lot of devices such as computers and mobile devices sprouting everywhere thereby making it easy for information to be communicated, and the education sector is not left out in this growing development. Computers and mobile phones have become an unavoidable part of our lives. There are a lot of things which we can do with these technologies. With the rapid development of mobile phones come several services like the Short Messaging Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and others, which are readily available and add to the usefulness of mobile phones. The availability of such communication medium in any institution makes it possible for information to be passed on to students as soon as they are available. Result Notification System is a system that can be used to overcome the limitations most of our institutions of higher learning face in making the examination results and grades available to students. The major advantage this system offers is that students can receive valuable information on the fly, easily and conveniently. SMS first appeared in the Europe in 1991 as part of the Global system for mobile communication (GSM) phase1 standard.SMS stands for Short Message Service, which is a communication protocol used to send and receive text messages. This acronym has now been adopted as a synonym for text message-short(typically a maximum of 160 characters), (Grinter &Eldridge, 2003). Short Message Service plays a major role in the implementation of this system. SMS have become important services today due to their usefulness in conveying information from one place to another in a very fast and easy way (Olusanya and Onazi, 2015).

Notification is a colloquial term used to define a machine-to-person communication that is important and/or time sensitive. A notification contains user-requested Content such as a reminder (important), a notification (urgent), and ultimately an alert (important and urgent). Student notification system is a system which sends latest news updates from the department website to student in form of push notifications. The system is developed so that students do not miss out on any alert and save their valuable time rather than the usual method of time-to-time checking whether the results have been uploaded to the website or not as they will also be able to check these results without having any course to visit the website.

Alert messaging or alert notification is the delivery of alerts to recipients.

Alert messaging emerged from the study of Personal Information Management (PIM), the science of discovering how people perform certain tasks to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use information relevant to them. Alert notification is a natural evolution or the concept of RSS(Really Simple Syndication) which makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner. Alerting makes it possible for people to keep up with the information that matters most to them. Alerts are typically delivered through a notification system and the most common application of the service is machine-to-person communication. Very basic services provide notification services via email or SMS. More advanced systems (for example AOL-American Online) provides users with the choice of selecting a preferred delivery channel such as e-mail, Short Message Service (SMS), instant messaging (IM), via voice through voice portals and more. Novel approaches provide users with the ability to schedule their own alerts (for example Google Calendar). The most sophisticated service providers embrace all capabilities, aggregating a multitude of reminder, notifications and alert, catering the delivery system to the specific context of the content being delivered thus enabling users to create sophisticated scenarios. The most common application of the service is person-to-person messaging, however, text messages are also often used to interact with automated systems, such as ordering products and services for mobile (or vice versa) messaging. Some mobile devices are also capable of accessing the internet. Such access does not require a desktop computer or a fixed landline connection. However, for the purpose of this introduction, we have focus on text message rather than mobile internet, as SMS is available on almost all mobile phones in the world.

Abia State Polytechnic make use of web based platform to provide examination results to their students when it is available, this is a common practice by various universities. The students provide certain information before they are able to access their results as this provides protection from unauthorized access.

Web based platforms (websites) are readily available platforms and can provide various options such as saving, uploading and printing. But this platform becomes inaccessible if the user has no access to the internet. The pasting/checking of results through notice board makes students to wait or queue. Thereby wasting their time, which in turn they might end up not checking it and the pasted result doesn’t provide all the information they required. Web based Result Alert System is a good options in a country where internet is readily available, but in a country where internet services are poor, it can be inconvenient and expensive. Students would have to visit a cyber café and pay to gain access to their results.

Hence, this proposed system will solve the problem that the existing system could not solve by implementing a system that notify the students of their relevant information about their results and other information relating to their course For easy identifying of the course title, and they can be able to access it anytime, anywhere using short message service (SMS).

1.2 Statement of the Problem

This section of the project work tries to look into those problems that prompted the researcher in carrying out this project work. It defines those problems that are existing in the old system. The existing system is associated with many problems which include:

1. Long queue to check their results that is pasted on the notice board, resulting to delay.
2. The pasted result does not show or provide all the data required for easy identifying of the course title, etc.

• Students who were not present when the result was pasted might not be able to see their result as some deviant students or those who did not do well in the exam may tear off the pasted result.

1. It does not guarantee global access to student’s records/result.

1.3 Aim and objectives of the study

The aim of this project is to design and implementation of a result notification system using short message service (SMS).

The objectives are:

1. Ability to see their results faster using SMS without queuing.
2. The message received shows all the needed information for easy identification of the course title.

• Ability to see their results via text message anywhere, anytime not necessary involving then being present.

1. It enables students to have access to real-time information. That is information relating to their results and their course, which they can be able to reach out to the school if there is any issue on the message sent to them.

1.4 Significance of the Study

The study is significant has it helps to integrate modern day technology to the university system. It gives and improves key indications on developing an electronic information system.

The project is quite significant in its nature because of the various advantages mobile technology poses; in the design of the system, it keeps student abreast of instant notification about their results and other relevant information. Hence having some significant which include

• It eliminate long queue at notice board.
• It saves data and money.
• It saves time.
• It guarantees global access to students’ records/data.

1.5 Scope of the Study                         

The research will center on the design and implementation of result notification system through SMS for the Department of Computer Science and ought to cover virtually all tertiary institutions in the country. But the scope of this study has been limited only to Abia State Polytechnic, Aba.

1.6 Limitation of the Study

This project was faced with a number of restricting factors which made the work impossible to get beyond the scope. The most pressing factors were.

1. Lack of Finance: As student, it was difficult to provide finance needed for this research at hand contributed a heavy problem to this research work.

1. Time factor: Owing the limited time available for the research required on gathering the write-up where only rounded off. Through the effect of this could be negligible, the impact of time constraints cannot be under emphasized.

1. Access to classified information: The apparent reluctant on the part of the lecturer/Exams and record in releasing certain classified information required by the research, constituted a threat to the success of the study.
2. Epileptic power supply: After we have gathered the little material. Information for this work, they are shortage of power supply to organized this work.
3. Inadequate supply of data/information: There was limited time to carry out the research, which hinder the supply of adequate data or information needed for the topic interest.

1.7 Definition of Terms

SMS It stands for Short Message Service and is also commonly referred/called to as text message. With SMS, you can send a message of up to 160 characters to another device.

Upload: It means data is being sent from your computer to the Internet.

MMS: It stands for Multimedia Messaging service and this type of text messaging is an evolution of the SMS. With an MMS, you can send messages in including pictures, video, or audio content to another device.

Information System:  A collection of input, output, feedback and environment that collects, processes, stores, analyses, retrieve and disseminates information for specific purpose.

Information: This is the result of processing raw data about a particular entity and presenting it in a way that is meaningful.

Alert: It is a notification that a threshold has been reached.

HTML CODE: – HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a type of computer language that is primarily used for files that are posted on the internet and viewed by web browsers.HTML files can also be sent via email.

Push Notification: A push notification is a message that pops up on a mobile device. App publishers can send them at any time; users don’t have to be in the app or using their devices to receive them.

Web browser: A Web browser is a software program that interprets the coding language of the World Wide Web in graphic form, displaying the translation rather than the coding. This allows anyone to “browse the Web” by simple point and click navigation, bypassing the need to know commands used in software languages.

Email: Email, also sometimes written as e-mail, is simply the shortened form of electronic mail, a protocol for receiving, sending, and storing electronic messages. Email has gained popularity with the spread of the Internet. In many cases, email has become the preferred method of communication.

TCP/IP: This often used but little understood set of operations stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. TCP/IP is the combination of the two and describes the set of protocols that allows hosts to connect to the internet. In actuality, TCP/IP is a combination of more than those two protocols, but the TCP and IP parts of TCP/IP are the main ones and the only ones to become part of the acronym that describes the operations involved.

WWW: acronym for World Wide Web

GSM: Global System for Mobile communication is a digital mobile network that is widely used by mobile phone users in Europe and other parts of the world. GSM digitizes and compresses data, then sends it down a channel with two other streams of user data, each in its own time slot.

MS: Mobile Station is a wireless terminal that is capable of receiving and sending alphanumeric messages.

MSC: A mobile switching center is the centerpiece of a network switching subsystem (NSS). The MSC is mostly associated with communications switching functions, such as call set-up, release, and routing.

SMC: Short Message Center is responsible for storing and forwarding messages to and fro the mobile stations.

STP: Single Transfer Point, allows for interconnections over signaling system.

BS: Base Station, which relays information to and from mobile Station.

SRNS: Student Result Notification System: is a system which sends latest news updates from the department website to student in form of push notifications.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol is a standard Internet Protocol for transmitting files between computers on the Internet over TCP/IP connections. FTP is a client-server protocol where a client will ask for a file, and a local or remote server will provide it.

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