South Wales University Lectures Marking and Grading System Project

This project report documents the development of a lectures marking and grading system for South Wales University, addressing the challenges of manual record-keeping. The report covers various aspects including the introduction, problem statement, project objectives, background research, methodologies, results, and ethical considerations. The system aims to automate the process of capturing student marks, calculating grades, and managing student information. The project includes system design, database implementation using SQL Server, and interface development. The report details the process of gathering system requirements, designing the database, and implementing the user interfaces. The system's objectives are to streamline the marking process, improve data accuracy, and provide better management of student records. The report also includes a critical evaluation of the project, discussing the decisions made during development, the outcomes, and future work. The system's implementation is intended to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the marking process and overall service delivery to students.

1Lectures Marking and Grading System Milestone 4
LECTURES MARKING AND GRADING SYSTEM MILESTONE 4
By (student names)
[Course Name]
[Lecture Name]
[University Name]
[City where the university is located]
[Date]

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Statement of Originality
CS3D661 Individual Project
This is to certify that, except where specific reference is made, the work described within this
project is the result of the investigation carried out by me, and that neither this project, nor
any part of it, has been submitted in candidature for any other award other than this being
presently studied.
Any material taken from published texts or computerized sources have been fully referenced,
and I fully realize the consequences of plagiarizing any of these sources.
Student Name (Printed) ………………………………..
Student Signature ………………………………..
Registered Course of Study ……………………………….
Date of Signing ……………………………….

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Abstract
There are various institutions in the world that offers various types of training to their students
and in order to provide the completion certificates all the students must cover the required
lessons and take exams, however the students exams are marked by the lectures and the tutors of
their respective faculties and units.
The results of the marked exams are then required to be recorded and analyzed to determine
whether the students qualifies to move to the next level of studies or should repeat.
Due to increased number of the students it hard become a challenge to keep and analyze the
students results by the lectures, therefore the café university management team had decided to
implement the café university management system that will be used to keep record of the student
marks, results and other information about the student like the talents, abilities and others
achievements that will add up the total students qualification.
This report is meant to describe the process of the system implementation and various aspects are
covered which includes the introduction, problem statement, project objectives, background
research, project methodologies, project results, project requirements, critical evaluation of the
project, conclusion and future work, and identification of the Ethical, Legal, Social and
Professional Issues.
Therefore the implementation of the system will be of great importance to the XYZ college for
the effective management of the student and the results records which will improve the entire
service delivery to the students.
Keywords:

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Table of Contents
Statement of Originality..............................................................................................................................2
Abstract.......................................................................................................................................................3
1 Introduction, Problem Statement and Objectives...............................................................................6
1.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................6
1.2 Problem statement.......................................................................................................................6
1.3 Project objectives.........................................................................................................................9
2 Background Research........................................................................................................................10
2.1 Background reading...................................................................................................................10
3 Methodology.....................................................................................................................................12
3.1 Research for System requirements methodology.......................................................................12
3.2 System Designing methodology................................................................................................14
4 Results...............................................................................................................................................15
4.1 Gathered system requirements.................................................................................................15
4.1.1 Requirements gathering....................................................................................................15
4.2 Tools used to support development............................................................................................16
4.3 Approach taking to developing solution....................................................................................17
4.4 Planning.....................................................................................................................................17
4.4.1 Description and problem statement....................................................................................17
4.4.2 Problem statement..............................................................................................................17
4.4.3 Objectives..........................................................................................................................18
4.5 Deliverables...............................................................................................................................19
4.5.1 Scope.................................................................................................................................19
4.5.2 Time frame.........................................................................................................................20
4.5.3 Resources and Project budget...........................................................................................20
4.5.4 Key stakeholders................................................................................................................21
4.5.5 Monitor and evaluation.....................................................................................................22
4.5.6 Approval signatures...........................................................................................................22
4.6 Implementation..........................................................................................................................23
4.6.1 System design....................................................................................................................23
4.6.2 System database and application implementation............................................................26
4.6.3 Testing...............................................................................................................................44

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5 Critical Evaluation.............................................................................................................................53
5.1 Approach taken to perform verification or validation................................................................53
5.2 Critical review of what was achieved........................................................................................53
5.3 Rational of decisions made during development........................................................................53
5.4 Evaluation of the project outcome.............................................................................................53
6 Conclusions and Future Work...........................................................................................................53
7 References.........................................................................................................................................53
8 Appendices........................................................................................................................................53
8.1 Ethical, Legal, Social and Professional Issues...........................................................................53
Reference...................................................................................................................................................53

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1 Introduction, Problem Statement and Objectives
1.1 Introduction
This is a report about the South Wales University marking and grading information system that
is proposed to be implemented to improve the marking of the student’s exams , projects, reports
and the allocated assignments, the system will facilitate the entire capturing of the students
marks of the various assessments above, sum them and award the respective grade to the
students.
The system is meant to be used by the various users who include the admin, lectures and the
students. The college admin will be entering the students details during the admission day into
the system, however the lecture will then mark the student’s exams, assignments, reports and
projects and then enter the students respective scores in various tests into the system, the system
will then use the entered results and then compute the final grade that will be used as the
determinant of whether the student will be transferred to the next level or not.
This exams management system will comprise of the various forms like the login form for the
validation and users authentication for the lectures, the tests results entry form where the exams ,
assignments, reports and the projects achieved scores are captured and the respective grades are
calculated to determine if the student to proceed or to repeat the level he is , there is also a talent
form and this will be used to capture the student talents which includes the sports, games,
attitudes, values and life skills and all theses record will be captured by the sports master for all
the students registered in the institution.
Therefore the implementation of the proposed system will help in elimination of the current
challenges faced in the institution since the records are captured manually which waste a lot of
time, cause errors , redundancy and duplication of the data, and pausing a lot of data insecurity.
1.2 Problem statement
In the institutions students records keeping is one of the major aspect to be considered where the
records to be kept includes the students bio information, student’s marks, and students talents
details which will be used to tell the abilities of the students who are in the institutions.

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The various institutions are currently facing a lot of challenges in the student’s record keeping as
they keep their records manually on the paper, books or files which is a tedious exercise and
takes them more time to retrieve and manage the records.
The south wales university however is one of the college that is facing similar challenge where
the students records and marks are captured manually in file and due to increased number of
students and records it had become a challenge to manage those records.
The institution is therefore facing various problems due to the following issues:
i. Lack of computerized systems.
The south wales university currently is using the physical files and file cabinets to store their
student’s records and therefore they do not have the computer systems in place to be used for
record keeping and management process.
ii. Lack of information management system.
The institution currently is not having the management system that can be used to manage the
information for the entire institution , therefore the students details , marks and talents details are
captured in the physical files which are prone to damage and loss.
iii. Lack of school database.
The institution is currently using the files as the record keeping item , this is due to the lack of
the files to be used to keep track of the students details, and therefore it becomes a big challenge
when it comes to the management and manipulation of the students details.
iv. Lack of trained staffs.
The staffs in the institution who are responsible of the management of the records has no good
and enough skills on how to use the computerized information management system to capture
and manage the records of the entire school students and therefore the institution require to offer
training on how to use the modern computerized record management systems (Akell, 2017).
v. Lack of data security.
The records that is captured in the institution is recorded in the files , these files are prone to
stealing and destruction and this is because there are various people who can have access to the

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files and they can have a negative intention or malicious damage purpose leading to the massive
loss of information (Bohannon, 2017).
vi. Poor time management.
The institution records are kept in a file and in case the staffs want to trace a certain record he
has to peruse each and every file and this as a result consumes a lot of time.
vii. Challenge in storing record.
Since the institution lacks information system they face allot of challenges while trying to store a
record, this is because they have to use the files and books to maintain the columns and rows of
records to be used.
viii. Challenge in retrieving records.
The institution staffs face a lot of challenges while trying to retrieve the stored records since
there are so many files and some are misplaced and therefore it takes allot of time to trace the
files and lift the specified record that is required( Erere, 2017).
ix. Challenge of updating records.
Since the records stored are hard to store and retrieve the records becomes more complicated to
update since the new records to be updated need to be deleted or cancelled which becomes more
untidy way of updating the new details in the file.
x. Loss of records.
The institution files are stored in the paper files where these paper files are prone to damage , fire
destruction , rodents destruction and therefore the institution end up losing the information of the
students and the staffs and it becomes hard to recover it back.
xi. Loss of money.
The institution may lose money in case the financial record file is misplaced and some of the
students had not cleared their changes , therefore the institution lose money as they have no trace
of the records.
xii. Lack of information backup system.
The institution has very important information and therefore it requires back up copy or facilities
which will be used to restore the lost information, however the institution has no such a system

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and therefore in case the information is lost it will not be recovered back (Hendra and
Arifin,2018).
Therefore the above are the major issues that require to be addressed by the proposed
information management system for better institution information management and operation
processes.
1.3 Project objectives
The proposed system will be implemented in order to achieve the various objectives which
include the following:
i. To design the exams management system.
This will comprise the use of the system story board interfaces where the various interactive
interfaces will be designed and implemented to show the various user inputs and the commands
to be used for the records management process.
ii. To design the exams management system database.
This will entail the implementation of the system database entity relationship and tables
structures indicating the various entities, attributes and also the data types, the database design
will act as the foot print to the system database implementation.
iii. To implement the management system interfaces.
This is where the entire system will be implemented using the selected C# language to
implement the system interfaces that will be used for users interaction including the feeding of
the records and management as well.
iv. To implement management system database.
This will entail the use of the database design to implement the actual database and tables , the
implementation will be done using the SQL server studio tool and the SQL script language
where the entity relationship diagram will be implemented fully( Jiraro, 2017).
v. To analyze the information management system requirements.
This will involve the correction of the system requirements from the target users who includes
the lectures, sports managers, the admin and the students and this will provide the details of the
required specifications to be implemented.

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vi. To generate information management system specific requirements.
This is where the analysis results are reviewed to identify the possible specific requirements that
need to be implemented in the proposed system , these requirements will be in accordance to the
students needs and therefore the implemented system will be of great use.
vii. To outline the system implementation plan.
This is where the plan is described on the various aspects to be covered in the implementation of
the entire system which includes the project timeline, scope, deliverables, the project budget and
the key stake holder’s identification.
viii. To critically evaluate the system.
This is where the implemented system is evaluated to identify the features implemented and to
check if all the requirements set are fully implemented in the system.
ix. To draw the conclusions and future system work.
This is the last aspect that will describe the implemented features of the system and the possible
changes and improvements that could be proposed to be implemented in the future.
2 Background Research
2.1 Background reading
The University of South wales is found in united kingdom (UK) where it make the uses of the
“safe” information management system which is a marking and grading system, however the
institution had been keeping record of the lectures and the new increased number of students
where there are various subjects in various classes, however the university lectures are allocated
various subjects in various classes, however this university system is meant to do various tasks
which includes marking , recording information and awarding students grades.
The results processing is much involving and consumes a lot of lectures time and energy in
marking, computing and grading the students performance due to the large number of students.
Therefore in these processes the lectures tend to make several mistakes since the work they do is
more tedious and involving, therefore the development of the proposed system with marking and
grading capabilities will enable the lectures to use less amount of energy.

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Therefore as a result of the implementation of the system the lectures will be more productive
and also it will enable awarding of the accurate grades to the students due to accuracy in the
marking and grading processes.
The accurate grading of the students there will be easy time for the student’s lectures while
trying to gauge the student’s ability and quality and therefore the system implementation require
to be carefully done since it will be used as the determiner of whether the students will be
proceeding to the next levels of education.
The use of the various evaluations and assessments are used to test the impacts and knowledge
received by the students while undertaking a certain courses and subjects which as a results the
effectiveness of the education systems and learning processes are determined.
In the past there had been a tendency of the universities ranking the students according to their
academic performance and as a results it develops negative influences in the learning processes
and therefore the society puts effort on making their students score highest marks instead of
focusing on other better factors like talents and abilities of the students as well.
Due to the possible errors that can arise from the exams only the students can be categorized in
accordance to other factors and scoring which includes the exams, assessments, projects, abilities
and talents which will be enabled by putting in place a reliable marking and grading systems.
Therefore the student’s performance should be assessed using various parameters which include
the sports/games, attitudes, values, life skills and talents and the inclusion of all these
requirements entirely solves the arising problems identified from the exam based education
system.
3 Methodology
3.1 Research for System requirements methodology
The system implementation is a process where all the identified features are implemented and
they are all identified by the system users and stake holders, the research is therefore important
to be carried out in order to know the exact requirements that the stake holders would like to be
implemented in the proposed system.

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The research will involve the collection of the information from the various sampled
stakeholders in order to give in details what they would like the system to do and function.
The information correction process can be done using the various tools which includes the
following:
i. Questionnaires.
ii. Observations.
iii. Interviews.
iv. Use of secondary data.
In this case the data will be collected using the questionnaire which is more effective tool and it
will allow the respondents to give independent responses on the proposed requirements.
Below is the questionnaire to be used.
EXAMS MARKING AND GRADING SYSTEM QUESTIONAIRE
We would like to get your views on the proposed exam system kindly give response below
Date_____________________
Full name_________________
1. Kindly select your category. Student lecture admin sports master
2. Have you ever used an exam management system? Yes no
3. If you are a student are you satisfied with the grades received ?Yes no
4. If you are a lecture are you satisfied with the current grading process ?Yes no
5. Among the following tick the items you would like to be used in the final grades.
Assessments
Exams
Projects
Skills
Abilities