CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
In Haramaya University particularly Faculty of computing and Informatics there are so many
final year projects are done every year. Although final year projects are good and appreciable,
there is no repository system for the project and it is difficult for junior students and also for
instructors to identify whether the project is done or not before, there is similarity of projects or
plagiarism of the project title and no status of the project. Due to manual system there is wastage
time, effort, money and failure in morality of the students who come up with similarity of the
project and there is no indication of the project status whether it is rejected or in progress to
improve it immediately. Because of this problem there must be need of system to monitor all the
activities of students and staff members.
Having this problems in mind, we come up with a solution to design and implement a system
that helps the students and instructor to identify previously done project and their constraints
along with the scope of such projects. Beyond this the project we are going to develop will help
the advisors in advising its students without the need to contact them face-to-face and time
restriction. The system is also going to be designed in order to enable students to upload their
project and calculate the grade based on evaluation and examination made by examiner.
The aim of this paper is to design an intranet based repository system containing students’ final
year project documentation and its implementation.
We are going to design and implement the project using open source and server side language
PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and MYSQL as back end.
Finally, our project is going to reduce the time wastage, effort made by students and coordinator
in a process of finding and identifying developed project and as well as problem related to
plagiarism.
Background of the Organization

The present Haramaya University can be traced back to the agreement made in 1952 between the
governments of Ethiopia and the United States of America which resulted in the establishment of
the Imperial College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts. Oklahoma State University in the USA
embarked on establishing physical plants and staff to run the college’s academic, research and
extension programs. The four-year B.Sc. in Agriculture was started at Haramaya campus in 1954
with both limited staff and facilities available. The College became a chartered member of Addis
Ababa University following the contractual termination of Oklahoma State University in 1967.
Consequently, it was re-named the Alemaya College of Agriculture in 1989.

In the last few years, the University has witnessed tremendous expansion in the number of
faculties, departments, students, staff and physical infrastructure. Apart from undergraduate
programs, the university has widely been engaged in the expansion and diversification of
graduate programs at Masters and PhD level.
Statement of the Project problem
As a starting point for problem definition, we tried to see how the final year projects are
monitored (evaluated) in Haramaya University Faculty of computing and Informatics. As
a team we gathered information from advisor, coordinator and seeing the last year student
presentation that Faculty of informatics monitors final year project through manual
system. Due to the manual system and absence of online project monitoring system the
following problems are occurred.
1. Now a days when everything is online how its possible that in faculty of informatics left
web application behind to monitor final year projects?

2. There is no repository system or database system that students and advisors refer easily
last year project.

3. There is the repetitive development of the same project.

4. Copying others project with a small modification (plagiarism).
5. There is unorganized way of communication between students and coordinator, students
and advisor and also between advisor and coordinator.

6. Lack of efficient and effective system that facilitate control of ongoing project activities
and student grade calculation.

7. Project title is given to students unfairly. That means priority of the title is not preferred.
Because may be corruption easily takes places when recording project title and
description date and time.

8. These are the main problems that we consider it and going to solve by designing and
implementing Final Year Project Monitoring System for Faculty of Informatics.
OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

General objective

The main objective of our project is to develop web based academic project management and
evaluation system.

Specific Objective

 Developing automatic repository system of student’s project.

 To avoid the repetitive development of the same project.
 Avoiding plagiarism related to final project.
 Organizing ways of communication between student, advisor and coordinator.
 Creating an efficient system that automate the control of project and grade calculation for
specific project.
 Reducing the wastage of time, effort and other resource to identify between previously
developed and also undeveloped project.
 Simplifying the process of hierarchical controlling of project team.

Methodology of the Project

Primary data collection methods have been used for the identification of problems and
understanding the existing system. Such methods involve:

Primary data source

Interview: We have interviewed our coordinator and other among faculty of computing and
informatics about the problem they are facing with existing system related to project
management and evaluation techniques. Below are list of some questions we have asked them:

 Would you explain about the overview of current working trend of managing and evaluating
final year project?
 What are challenging factor that disable you to not handle previously developed in an
organized way?
 How do you avoid plagiarism of projects?
 Is undergoing system helps you with efficient time and cost management?
 How is your grading system look like?
 Is there organized ways of communicating between project stakeholders?
 Is there any formal way that an advisor controls the student’s project progress?
 Is there a common criterion for measuring project developed by students?

Observations: As students, we are one of the victims of existing system, as we are facing
problem of identifying between developed and not developed projects. We also are able to see
other department students facing the same problem that we are facing currently. Plagiarism is
one of the problems that is commonly seen among students.

Secondary data source

Internet: Internet aids us to see the available sample on the internet and to download different
types of tutorials which are related to our project and help us in doing the project.

Scope of the Project

As a system we identified the scope of the project which determines what we include or not
include in our system based on the triplet project condition (scope, time and cost) that incurred in
the project implementation process.

Scope In: The system to be developed should include the following activities:

 Enable effective and organized communication between students and advisor as well as
project coordinator.
 Facilitate organized storage of previously developed projects, which result in avoiding
plagiarism of projects.
 Enables advisors to control student’s project progress.
 Students are able to create and manage their group account.
 Coordinators are able to assign advisors and create account for them.
 Coordinators are able to post notifications and submitted titles for students.
 Coordinators are able to assign examiner for student’s document examination.
 Students are able to upload their documentation’s and implementation’s.
 Administrator should able to create it’s account and assign coordinator for each department.
Scope Out: The system to be developed should not expected to include the following features:

 The system to be developed is not expected to calculate the grade for all courses of the
semester.
 The system is not going to work except for faculty of computing and informatics.

Significance of the Project

The new system is beneficial for both students and university, as it is to be designed to solve
efficiency, plagiarism and resource wastage problems. Below are some of the significance of the
project:

 For Students:
 Reduce time and effort of finding undeveloped titles.
 Make them self-dependent and self-confident by reducing plagiarism of project.
 Organize the way students communicate with their advisor and coordinator.
 For University:
 Reduce improper resource wastage.
 Reduce work overload of staff.
 Reduce plagiarism of project.
 Facilitate a way to identify between previously developed and undeveloped projects.
 Enable organized repository of developed projects.
 Facilitate hierarchical control and communication of advisor, examiner, coordinator and
administrator.

Feasibility Assessment
Time, scope, and cost have an important relationship between them, for example, when the
project scope increase, then the project will use more time to complete and the cost may be also
increase. Therefore, we must consider these issues in feasibility study.

Economical Feasibility

Economic feasibility is most frequently used for evaluation cost-benefit effectiveness of the
system. The project is found to be economically feasible if it result in reduction of cost for
materials used in manual operation. Accordingly our system will reduce
Generally, the system that we are going to develop produces both tangible and intangible
benefits.
Tangible benefits:
 Reduction of papers.

 Reduce coordinator, advisor and examiners effort to post notifications and assess project.
 Error Reduction.
Intangible benefits:
 Increase in satisfaction of both students and university.
 Give better and effective services.

 Increase efficiency.

To implement the new system there is no need of other resource like computer because the
system is easy and compatible with current resources. So that the new system will not cost
university further resources.

Technical Feasibility

Our project is technically feasible because Haramaya University is capable of implementing this
project and students are also technically capable of developing the given project. We had own
the experience of developing such a projects starting from joining the university. We have gone
through developing C++, C#, HTML and PHP projects. Based on above experience of
developing projects we determine that we are capable of developing this project.

Operational Feasibility

The proposed system will most likely solve the problems on existing system as it designed to
solve problems of efficiency, effectiveness, plagiarism and repetitive development of same
projects.
Schedule Feasibility

The schedule describing the major activities time-frame are drawn below using Gantt chart.

S.No Phase Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

Dec 10---

Dec 30---

Dec 10---

Dec 10---
Jan 20---
Dec 10

Dec 10

Dec 10
Jan 10

Jan 30
1 Project
Proposal and
initiation
2 Requirement
gathering

3 Requirement
Analysis

4 System
Designing

5 System
Implementation
and Operation

Gantt chart showing schedule feasibility

Management Issue

Team Configuration and Management

All of our team members have played a great role in completing this project effectively and
timely. Here is the table showing the role of our team members:
ID No Team Name Role
619/08 Kidist Belay Project manager
610/08 Gutema Bunturi Designer
628/08 Merema Sied Requirement Gathering
1478/07 Hirut Geto System Analyst

Communication Plan

The communication procedure followed by our group members are bottom up which involves
that all group members think of innovative idea and if it’s accepted by all group members the
manager will work on its executions.

Limitation

The only limitation to our project is weakness of internet signal and inconsistent power supply.