ABSTRACT
This paper examines the use of mobile phones to deliver examination results via Short Messaging Service (SMS) in a university setting, where students who have written exams and are anxious to see their grades need to receive their grades in a convenient and accessible manner, whether at home, on the road, or at work.
Most students now have access to a mobile phone, which they carry with them practically everywhere. As a result, this technology has the potential to be extremely useful in delivering information to them quickly, simply, and while they are on the move. Students can not only request their marks by SMS, but the technology can also provide the grades directly to their phones.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
People have been able to communicate more effectively thanks to computers and the Internet. The telephone system, which was invented several years ago as the primary mode of communication, has advanced greatly, to the point where we now have fixed wireless phones, mobile phones, and other similar devices. With the rapid growth of mobile phones have come a slew of new services, such as Short Messaging Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), that are freely available and enhance the utility of mobile phones. SMS, in particular, is widely used for communication and has lately been utilized to provide a variety of services such as airline ticketing, banking, and commercial services such as share and sell, which allows subscribers to quickly share and/or sell airtime.
SMS (Short Message Service) is a mobile technology that allows you to send and receive text or binary messages from and to your phone. Because SMS is relatively simple to use, a user can quickly learn how to send SMS. In Europe, more than 160 billion SMS messages are delivered each month (Mavrakis, 2004), and according to Resource Shelf (2006), 48.7 billion SMS messages were sent in the second half of 2005, increasing 50% over the previous six months. The main benefit of SMS is its low cost and widespread availability, as almost everyone owns a phone.
Several service providers offer SMS-based mobile services in various parts of the world. The cost of sending an SMS is usually quite high. Even today, especially in underdeveloped nations like Nigeria, students swarm to notice boards in fear of their test results, despite the fact that most universities, including those in less developed countries, now make examination results available on their websites. The availability of the Internet in less developed countries is still limited and expensive. Even in affluent countries, where most people have access to the Internet, SMS is still a faster and less expensive way of communicating exam results and other information. Universities could provide educational services based on SMS, according to Pramsane and Sanjaya (2006), such as grade release, enrollment information, university announcements, and internship opportunities.
Not only does the result checking system allow students to request grades, but it also provides them as soon as they are available. This is accomplished by either giving the result to the students (by text message) or working on a request from a student to produce the result (pulling). The PUSH and PULL SMS techniques are the most extensively utilized in applications. This program can be used to either push or pull messages.
A Push SMS application is one in which the application sends a message to the user. It’s a one-way communication. In other words, a message is initiated by a mobile application (in this case, the SMS result monitoring application). A school is a good example.
Users do not seek grades, take no action, and are not paid for getting SMS. As long as their cell phone is inside their network operator’s coverage, the SMS would be delivered to them in a matter of seconds, regardless of where they are.
A Pull SMS application, on the other hand, is one in which the user submits a request and the program responds. It’s a full duplex scenario here. When a student asks his or her grades for a recently completed semester, for example. The suggested system has both PULL and PUSH functions, making it even more efficient and convenient for pupils who are unsure or worried.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Students in Nigerian universities are having difficulty viewing their results following exams due to a lack of a proper method of result dissemination. They must come to school and strain to view results on the notice board, which is eventually destroyed or absent, forcing students who arrive late to begin hunting for their results. Although most institutions provide online portals where students may check their results, the extremely slow and expensive internet connectivity can be a deterrent for students who choose to use this medium.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
Student access to results is more efficient, convenient, and cost effective when results are distributed by SMS. The following are some of the advantages of applying this system:
– It can send and receive SMS from any phone connected to any network.
– It is available 24 hours a day, removing any constraints on when students can access their results.
– When a user submits an invalid request, they are alerted.
– It is quite simple to customize.
– It gives you more alternatives for checking results, which gives you more freedom.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The project entails the development and implementation of an SMS Student Result Dissemination System that Pushes (sends) results to students as soon as they become available, as well as allowing students to request results and receive a reply with marks. HTML, PHP, AJAX, JAVASCRIPT, and CSS 4 will be used to create it, with MYSQL as the back-end database. For the two-way SMS implementation, a two-way SMS gateway was used.
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The SMS results distribution system has the same restrictions as SMS apps in general.
– Unlike paper results, which are stamped, SMS results are impossible to certify. Mobile operators, on the other hand, issue numbers that include the firm or institution’s name. The user can be confident that the communication came from the correct source this way.
– The standard SMS message length is 160 characters. SMS technology has a drawback in this regard. As a result, depending on the amount of space available, the messages are abbreviated.
– Because SMS technology (like email) does not guarantee specific transmission times or message delivery, some messages may be delayed, blocked, or lost in transit.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
Short Message Service (SMS) is a type of text messaging communication that is used on phones and mobile phones.
A Short Message Service (SMS) Gateway allows a computer to send and receive SMS transmissions to and from a telecommunications network. The majority of messages are transmitted over mobile phone networks.
HTML is the main markup language for building web pages and other information that can be viewed in a web browser.
PHP is a server-side scripting language that is primarily used for web development but may also be used for other purposes.
AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, a web application development approach.V
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