The Copperbelt University Online Registration System

Note:

The pronoun used to refer to a person in this report is masculine; however in this context it is used to refer to both sexes.

Introduction

The Copperbelt University online Registration System was designed specifically to address the problems surrounding the manual registration process that characterized the University since its inception. Registration, in this particular context, refers to the processes involved when a student applies to the University, gets admitted, pays for and confirms the courses he is going to take for a particular academic year or semester, confirms and probably pays for the courses he will be examined on, later on receives his results. The online registration System aimed to automate most parts of the registration process and simplify the process to such an extent that it can be performed in under an hour notwithstanding the location of the student.

Background

Prior to the time when the online registration system was introduced, every aspect of the registration process was done manually, that is, paper work was involved at all stages. Students had to buy application forms which they would have to fill in; submit them to the academic office; and these would in turn process the applications, and upon approval mail the acceptance letters to the students via regular mail. The students, on the other hand, upon reporting to school, would have to fill in registration forms, and present deposit slips from the bank to certify their payments.

At the Copperbelt University registration comes twice in an academic year: course registration at the beginning of the year, when students confirm the courses they will be taking in the academic year, and make any payments thereto; and exam registration, when students would confirm the courses they would sit for in the exams.

This way of doing things required the students to be present on campus and members of staff to attend to them. It was a laborious process that took days to complete and tired both students and members of staff alike.

The sequence of steps below describes what processes the student would undergo to complete course registration:

1. A student reports to the finance department to get his invoice. 2. He goes to the bank and deposits money in the bank account specified by the University.3. He goes to his school and collects the registration forms amounting to three, which he

fills in, entering the same registration details on three forms.4. Each copy of the registration forms has to be dropped at various offices, one at the

student’s school, the other with the academic office, and the third is for the student himself.

5. The student has to have the forms signed by various officials in order for his registration to be completed.

6. The student has to present the original cash or check deposit slip to the cashier in order for him to verify that the student has paid his tuition fees and that he is ready to do his registration.

And the following sequence of events would characterize exam registration

1. A student collects exam registration forms from his school.2. He completes any outstanding payments towards his tuition fees.3. He hands in the completed and signed up registration forms to the school and the

academic office for filing.

The manual mode of registration, including the manual updating and keeping of records, has more disadvantages than advantages; and these are highlighted in the next section.

The Downside of the Manual Registration Process

As already elaborated above, the manual mode registration was tedious and laborious. There are more disadvantages, however, that need to be mentioned as they had a negative impact on both the institution and the students.

The following were the noted disadvantages:

1. The process was expensive for the student, because the student had to travel to the University to do the registration.

2. Stationary and other material had to be purchased in order to facilitate registration. These items are costly and hence the institution had to spend a lot of money for the registration exercise.

3. A large number of members of staff had to be present on campus during the registration. 4. Corrupt practices easily crept in because students with insufficient funds could bribe their

way to registration. 5. Because all the record keeping was done manually, a lot of mistakes crept in due to

erroneous entries on both the members of staff and the students. As a result the records kept were far from being accurate.

6. Records easily got lost, as maintaining a large number of manual records was cumbersome.

7. It was impossible to produce accurate reports on the registration process: the number of registered students being based more on guesses than accurately compiled results. Furthermore, the creation of any such reports would take a long time.

8. The registration process would take a number of days; and because it took so long, it disrupted the normal academic calendar.

The Problem Statement

To put it succinctly, the major problem was coming up with an automated registration system that would replace the manual registration system and cut down on the costs and other inadequacies that came with the manual mode of registration. This system would have to allow all the major actors involved in the registration process to communicate with each other in minimal time. Furthermore, the system would have to interrogate the financial system available at the institution to find out the financial standing of the student before allowing him to carry out any registration. It would have to link all the systems at the institution and enable them to interact with each other, forming one seamless system.

The Solution

The following was the solution to the problem stated above, and is clearly elaborated in the following statements of the tasks and abilities of the system that was developed.

The system that was developed was able to:

1. Allow Students to apply Online:A web interface, or website, was developed that could allow for the following tasks concerning online registration, tasks that were initially done manually:

a. Via the website, an applicant can submit the following:i. His personal details such as his names and address.

Figure 1: Filling in of personal Details

ii. His grade 12 examination results.

Figure 2: Submission of Results

iii. Scanned copies of his examination results slips.iv. A Photo of his face.

Figure 3: Uploading a Photo

b. The applicant can specify the programme of study that he wishes to; and if he has any second choice the system allows him to select the second choice.

c. The system rejects incorrect data that the applicant may enter through the application form.

d. The school board is able to view the applicant’s details and based on these, they can determine whether the applicant has qualified for admission.

e. The system can thus allow the applicant to log on from any location via the Web and start the process of application. The applicant is able to dismiss the application process and continue it at any time of his convenience as long as he does not exceed the application deadline. The system is able to ‘remember’ where he left off and is able to differentiate him from any other applicant.

f. Once the applicant completes his application, he can log on to view the status of his application. He may lodge in another application for consideration; but that application requires a different set of credentials.

Figure 4: Message after Completing Application

g. Once an applicant is accepted, he is notified via the web; and an email is sent to him to notify him of this. Furthermore, he is able to download a printer-friendly version of his acceptance letter.

h. Upon being accepted, the system automatically assigns a student a Student Identification Number (SIN) and allocates him the details that are relevant to the program he has been accepted in.

2. Allow a Student to do Course Registration

Through the web interface, the student is able to do course registration. And the system accomplishes the following tasks:

a. The system determines the courses that a student will take for a particular semester using the following two premises:

i. If the student is a first year student who has just been accepted , the system based on his programme of study, generates a list of the courses that he should take for that particular semester and make these available to him via his portal for review.

ii. If the student is a returning student the system generates the list of courses he is supposed to take for the present semester by reference to his

examination results. If the student failed the previous semester, the system should be able to tell him so and advise him accordingly.

b. The system determines the tuition fees that a student take for a particular semester based on his programme of study, the year he is in, and the number of courses he is registering for. Furthermore, it is able to generate an invoice indicating the fees he ought to pay.

c. A student is able to access his account on the web, via an interface that is known as the Students’ Portal and supply his credentials. When authenticated, the student will be shown all the details of his account, including the courses he is supposed to register for, the amount he is supposed to pay for his tuition fees and so forth.

Figure 5: The Students’ Portal Web Interface

Figure 6: Access to Financial Standing

d. When a student determines that he should proceed with course registration he should, firstly, note the amount he is supposed to pay by looking at the invoice. He should then proceed to pay that amount by depositing the money in the given bank account.

e. Ideally, when a student pays his tuition fees, the system should readjust the financial standing of the student in order to allow him to register.

f. A student who has not paid his tuition fees or the minimum allowed percentage should not be allowed to register at all.

g. The system should allow the student to preview his details and after confirming that they are correct, he should be able to register with a click of a single button.

h. Upon registration, the system should generate a printable report that certifies his registration. If any proof be needed aside from that available on the system, the printed form will provide such proof.

Figure 7: Printable report of courses registered for

i. Members of staff, specifically the lecturers, are able to view the students who have registered for a particular programme and course; and generate class lists and any other reports that may be needed.

j. The system is able to generate comprehensive reports, for example, it can report how many students have reported for a particular semester.

3. Allow for Online Exam Registration

Exam registration, being the process where a student confirms the courses he should be examined on and complete any payments that may be required is also facilitated by the Online Registration System.

The system is able to do the following pertaining to Exam registration:

a. The system generates a list of courses that a student should register for.b. The system is further able to inform the student of his financial standing at this

juncture; for example, if he did complete paying his tuition fees, the system informs the student about that; and denies him the chance to do his registration until he completes his payments.

c. The student is allowed to choose less courses than those that appear on his registration list; but of course the exact rules of what a student can do and not do is determined by the lecturers in collaboration with the academic department.

d. A student is able to register the particular courses he is going to write in a particular semester’s exam with one click of a button.

e. Upon registration the system produces a printable report, confirming that the student has successfully done his exam registration; and if needed, the student can provide the print out of this form as proof of his registration.

f. Members of staff are able to ascertain from the reports that the system is producing which students are eligible to write examinations for a particular semester.

4. Allow for Online Publication of Results

The online registration System allows for online publication of results. Considering that the students have their own interface to the system, that is, a students’ portal, they are able to preview their results right on the portal, by accessing their accounts. Furthermore, the relevant member of staff, responsible for publication of results have their own interface on the site that will enables them to post the results into the system; and the system takes it up from there, allowing each student to view the particular results.

The Security Features of the System

A main concern of any online system is security. Of course, when a system is online, it automatically becomes vulnerable to so many attacks from hackers and crackers. The students’ portal, which will be a web-based application, could be the entry point to a lot of attacks; so the following are the security measures that were implemented in the system to make it more secure.

1. User authentication

As a minimum, both the students’ portal and the staff portal have this security feature. As shown in the figure below, the student will have to enter His student Identification number which will serve as the user name, and a password:

Figure 8: Students’ Portal Login Form

As a result of this authentication, invalid users are barred from using the system:

Figure 9: Barring unauthorized users

2. Limited use of Query Strings:

Query strings are a way of passing data via the URL (Uniform Resource Locater), and although usually a cheaper and easier way of passing data from one page to another, the system passes data securely through less conspicuous methods.

3. Non-divulging Error Messages

The error messages that the system can generate when it encounters a problem can often provide insight into the architecture and workings of the system. Therefore, to avoid divulging too much about the system, the error messages that the online system produces are as succinct as possible.

4. Encryption

Where necessary, data is encrypted, especially sensitive data such as that found in the database. An example of such type of data includes passwords.

5. Limiting the rights of end Users

The more rights users have, the higher the security risks. For example, if users can alter their credentials and other such details, it is possible that a user can become careless and an individual with ill intent can abuse that account. The greater the access rights of users, the higher the risk. Therefore to reduce this security risk, the rights of users are reduced and set to the minimum level comfortable enough to facilitate and achieve the aims of the online registration system.

Challenges and Problems Faced

In about a month, the initial version of the system was set up and ready for testing. The tests were successful, for the little test data that was available. The go ahead was given and the system was implemented early April, 2012, both on the newly admitted students and returning students, who had to do their registration online. Although a parallel system implementation was suggested, it was decided the Online System be the sole system used for the registration process in order to facilitate its success.

However, due to a lack of foresight and possibly insufficient testing, a number of problems quickly arose that threatened the success of the online registration system.

Firstly, the data that was available was mostly insufficient and incorrect. The major contributing factor was the lack of a unified system of course allocation and academic rules among the various Schools of CBU. Hence the data had to be refined and corrected, some of it specifically tailored for a particular school.

Initially, CBU was using an Internet service provider was providing CBU with a 2 Megabytes bandwidth channel. When the online registration system was implemented, thousands of students from all over the country were attempting to access the website; and so this bogged down the minimal resource that was available to such an extent that the website was often disrupted. The website became quite inaccessible on many Internet Service Providers.

To overcome the limitation of bandwidth, CBU decided to change the Internet Service Provider. CBU was now given a channel of 4 Megabytes. Ever since then, the website dedicated to online registration has been accessible on all Internet Service providers with very few problems.

Advantages of the Online Registration System over the Manual System

The following are the noted advantages of the online registration System:

Online registration eliminated the long, winding queues that were the norm during the registration period by allowing students to register from anywhere where there is internet access.

Travel expenses were dramatically reduced because students didn’t need to be in campus during the registration process.

Registration expenses were reduced dramatically because there was no need to print out registration forms. Furthermore, fewer employees were needed to handle the exercise. The online registration process required only a handful of employees to be present on the premises.

The registration process afforded CBU a chance to claim a lot of money in terms of unpaid tuition fees because Students with outstanding balances from previous academic years were unable to perform their registration. Furthermore, the system forced all students to adhere to the rule of paying at least 50 percent of the actual tuition fees before being allowed to register.

The online registration system reduced the levels of corruption on both the students side and the members of staff; because no one could manipulate the system for unjust gain.

Conclusion

The online registration system provides an interface for both the student and the members of staff that enables members of staff to easily conduct their duties, and students to easily do their registration, notwithstanding their physical location. The online registration system integrates all the major functions of the institution, to provide one seamless mode of operation that minimizes costs for all the actors involved, in this case, the student and the institution.

The registration of students for the 2012 academic year was conducted successfully; and it is noteworthy that the institution managed to collect a lot of money this year from students. Therefore the online registration system has improved the overall financial standing of the institution; not only in that it eliminated great costs on the part of the Copperbelt University, but also in that the University has since then been invited to create similar systems for other institutions, giving them the opportunity to make more money.

The problems that surrounded the online registration system were minimal and will reduce as the institution gains more and more experience through each successive registration period.