DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE ACADEMIC E-LEARNING AND WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1.   BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Since the Internet was adopted and further developed as a means of communication by educational institutions in the 1970s, academics have been aware of its massive potential as a learning tool. In recent years, governments of both developed and under-developed nations have become increasingly excited about the possibilities of online learning to deliver cost effective, easily accessible and ever-current education to all ages and social backgrounds, regardless of time and geography.

In the ‘Information Age’ where the need for ‘knowledge workers’ increases as the need for manual workers decreases, ‘lifelong learning’ is seen as key to the continued success of modern society. ‘e-Learning’ is considered by many as the only viable solution to the problem of delivering the resources required to facilitate lifelong learning.

However, current theories and practices in e-learning are neither simple nor coherent, meaning that the implementation of this solution is happening sporadically, randomly, and with varying degrees of success. In spite of the enthusiasm and commitment being shown by the UK government, there is still considerably apathy, confusion and scepticism about e-learning amongst teachers, students and academics alike. Although most recognise that e-learning has the potential to enhance greatly learning and the learning experience at all levels, many feel that its drawbacks are currently still too great to commit so heavily to it.

Although much has been said and written on the subject of e-learning, there are few definite conclusions to be drawn from it. Books are written, Internet groups are formed and conferences are held, but we still seem unable to really define how, when or where e-learning should best be used. While the arguments rage on, an increasing number of institutions are attempting to pioneer their own style of e-learning, all with their own successes and failures. The DfES aims to have in place its ‘Unified e-Learning Strategy’ by the summer of 2004, but whether this will improve, impede or have no effect on e-learning is itself a mater for debate.

This report will aim to give a general overview of the extent to which e-learning is being used in the UK, how it is being used and its potential and pitfalls. It will examine e-learning from the point of view of students and teachers, and will explore how the UK Government is attempting to regulate e-learning. It will also look briefly at the current state of e-learning globally.

What is e-Learning?

e-Learning is the employment of technology to aid and enhance learning. It can be as simple as High School students watching a video documentary in class or as complex as an entire university course provided online. e-Learning began decades ago with the introduction of televisions and over-head projectors in classrooms and has advanced to include interactive computer programmes, 3D simulations, video and telephone conferencing and real-time online discussion groups comprised of students from all over the world. As technology advances, so does e-learning, making the possibilities endless.

1.2 OVERVIEW OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM

Currently in Ezekiel private college, lecturing of student is done manually. Themajor problem of the current system is that teachers need to be present in the school to lecture students. Most lecturers in this school do teach in other school and sometimes they might not be present to teach the students. As a result of this, teachers are unable to complete the course content of a particular course thereby leading to failure of student in examination.

1.3       STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

1. Staff are resentful, as they feel obliged / are encouraged to do the training in their own time i.e. during their lunch break, or before / after work; instead of being given time off to do it.
2. It may be difficult to gage whether or not staff are actually completing the training fully / benefiting from it as much as they would from a classroom based training session.
3. Staff may need support to use the technology.
4. Online resources take time and money to set up and require ongoing maintenance and support.

1.4 THE OVERVIEW OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

The propose system is going to be automated web-based application where teachers can upload lectures in form of video, audio and text. This project will also provide an avenue for posting of assignment, and quiz as well as submission.

1.5 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

Both e-learning system and workflow system tend to solve the same very general problem of having or many actors executing an activity or graph for activities and producing something.

Therefore, the main components of such a system in both cases are actor, activity, and product. The goal of an e-learning system is the “learning”. The main actor, the learner (students) is expected to learn, to acquire new knowledge and competencies, through the execution different structured learning activities.

1.6       SCOPE OF STUDY

The scope of work in this project is stated as given:

1. To develop the system by using Apache, PHP and MySQL.
2. To serves an administrative function by giving student’s access to course documents and other
3. course materials for each courses they were taken.
4. To send latest announcement and news that is related for each course.
5. To display course related information on the link and reference item.
6. Provide FAQ (frequently ask question) and add a comments in this system where students and
7. Teachers be able to ask questions and submit their comments.
8. Provide a simple of IQ Test to students.

1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

I will totally not conclude that this project will effectively handle all the problems

encountered due to the change in technology from time to time, but with accuracy, this

project will be able to handle all necessary problems encountered by the above case study

except that this software will not be able to do the result computation of students.

1.8 DEFINATION OF TERMS

1. PHP: is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. As of January 2013, PHP was installed on more than 240 million websites (39% of those sampled) and 2.1 million web servers.
2. Apache: is a freely available Web server that is distributed under an “open source” license. Version 2.0 runs on most UNIX-based operating systems (such as Linux, Solaris, Digital UNIX, and AIX), on other UNIX/POSIX-derived systems (such as Rhapsody, BeOS, and BS2000/OSD), on AmigaOS, and on Windows 2000.
3. Pedagogy: (etymology and pronunciation) is the discipline that deals with the theory and practice of education; it thus concerns the study and practice of how best to teach.

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