University of Santo Tomas
Faculty of Engineering
Information and Computer Studies Department
Information System
IS Capstone Project
UST High School Student Portal
Thesis Adviser:
Ms. Maricel Afurong
Members:
Cruz, Louis Albert
Dizon, Reuben John
Tan, Kenneth
Tongson, John Kevin
Chapter 1
Introduction
A. Project Context
In our generation, technology is frequently used in our daily basis in life, but technology is
not easily obtained, it goes through many phases of research and development. Moreover, every
technology has its own system so it can process the required task. Specifically a system has its
structure, behavior and interconnectivity, thus having a technology with a system will provide
more efficiency and effectiveness from its process up to its output.
In 1979, the Santo Tomas e-Service Providers (STePS) with the mission to provide
software based services to the faculty and students of the university. As the years pass by STePS
established three branches – Computing Services (EDP), Communications Services
(Networking, and Information System Development (ISD-Software Development). Now its
services are provided to the whole thomasian community from faculties, students, administrative
offices up to the Dominican Fathers, providing them with optimum services.
The STePS assured the development and maintenance of their services through its ISD
division where they continue in their goal for enhancement and improvement of features that
suits the needs of the University. But as the community grows, their list of tasks grows also. The
UST High School Student Portal which will be added to the official website of the UST High
School is one of the tasks in their list but due to priority of other projects that they have, they
can’t start the project so they have given it to the researchers.
The Student Portal would be developed and improved the current process implemented by
UST High School. The current process includes a student profile for every student which
includes the student’s profile; these data are kept by the records custodian on a database as
information about each student and also he is the one who will provide the basis for sectioning. It
also includes the traditional way of enrollment wherein the student would have apresent his ID
and payment to the accounting department and then the student would get a receipt together with
the information about his schedule and section for the school year. Information about the
student’s grades are done by the Head Teachers through PTC(Parent-Teacher-Conference) and
school announcements are given11 by the administrative office to the students by posting it at
the their bulletin board or announcing it verbally.
UST High School’s webpage has viewing features only where students and staffs may see
the general profile of the school, its staff members and students but the viewer needs to
download the content for viewing the students or members of the staffs. This is why the STePS
have decided to come up with a project to create a student portal, to let the students interact with
the webpage and to give information about their grades and school activities. In addition to the
student portal, it includes a control panel feature for administrators.
Encodes/Update
Database
UST High School
Administrative Office
Gives General Data/
Requests change in
content of the webpage
UST High School
Database
Retrieve Data
UST High School Website
Santo Tomas e-Service
Providers (STEPS)
View/Download
Content
Guests
Figure 1
High School current system
In
this
diagram
the
administrative
office
of
the
High
School
gives
the
documents/information to the STePS that are needed to supplement the content of the webpage
which contains the profile of the high school, faculty staff, student body, clubs and updates on
school activities. Frequently the high school request changes its content especially on the updates
due to daily school activities and status.
B. Purpose and Description
Student Portal
Database
Student Profile
Student Section
Student Grades
Student’s Online
Enrollment
Sticker status of
registered vehicles
Evaluation of
Faculty Member
Announcements
Figure 2
Student portal system
The researcher’s purpose for the I.S. Capstone project is to establish a system that
interacts with the institute and the student itself which is a student portal, making it mandatory
for High School students to access the webpage. Not only it interacts but it will organize the
documentation of student information where most records of documents of the students will be
converted into information and storing it in a database which will be accessed by the student
portal.
The project will enable the students in the institute to access their personal information
through a web page which is accessible from their user account by letting the student view their
information such as their personal information, grades, sections, transactions (payment of
enrollment), evaluation of faculty members and announcements. User accounts will be given to
each student enrolled in the High School as well as administrators will also have accounts where
a control panel is added for them to be used, the control panel’s purpose is to let the
administrator view, update, post announcements or encode information, this will also enable
them to update the content or modify its preferences of the student portal itself. Accounts’
password is changeable.
In every account of a high school student, the student’s personal information will be used
as reference for the administrator in terms for contact reasons. The grades of a High School
student can be viewed by his/her own account respectively secured, sections and schedules of the
student can be also viewed by their own given account. Online enrollment is part of the feature
of the student portal where parents/students may enroll through the webpage and using bank
accounts to have a valid payment without needing them to enter the UST High School district,
the system will also maintain the historical transactions done during the enrollment by the
parent/student to monitor how much they paid or need to pay throughout the school year.
The stickers for registered vehicles are added due to administration requests, information
are added to the student’s profile such as the plate number of the vehicle. Teachers’ evaluation
forms are implemented in the student portal to decrease paper works.
Administrators can view student profile, record of payments (enrollment), sections and
grades. Also they can update/encode student’s information and posting announcements like
school activities/events. In all, this student portal will create an environment for student
coordination thus improving effectiveness of student convenience and the school itself.
C. Objectives
Major Objective
The objective of the researchers is mainly to provide a web-based system for UST high
school students to strengthen the collaboration of the school and the student. A system capable of
displaying their profiles as a student, post the latest updates about their grades and
announcements related to academics/school events. This system is also to be a portal to a simpler
means of enrolment by making it online. It is to be maintained and updated by administrators and
faculty staffs to preserve the system’s credibility.
Specific Objectives

To provide a faster and reliable source of information through the use of a webpage
that enables them to view their personal information, grades, subjects, school
activities and payment of fees (enrollment).

To provide a system that will contain the records of payment of the students.

To make the announcement procedure by the administrators and staff easier by
enabling them to post in the webpage. They will not need the assistance of STePS in
this matter.

To eliminate the chance of arguments between parents and administrative office due
to failure to comply with the requirements of announcements made by the school.

To provide an online evaluation of faculty members to lessen the paper works those
are needed to be printed and to assess the output.

To include the registered vehicles of the student or student’s parent. To give
convenience to the administrative office.
D. Scope and Limitations
The scope of the researcher’s project will focus on creating a student portal that will
provide administrators and students of UST High School a developed webpage which is
connected to the database of the High School and as well as enabling them to use the system, the
researcher are to be supervised and monitored by a developer of STePS in the ISD (Information
Software Development) division. Students can view his/her profile, grades, sections, transactions
(enrollment), and announcements of school events/activities. Information needed to supply for
the student portal are acquired from the UST High School. High School administrator can access
the control panel and letting them encode, post, update. Enrollment of students in the school will
also be added in the system where it will be changed as an online enrollment. Faculty members
are evaluated via the student portal.
The limitations of the project is that no college students/grade school students will be
allowed to access the student portal for UST High School, the only people that can access the
webpage are only enrolled student of the UST High School as well as the administrator. In
addition, STePS are valid to access the webpage for problem/support reasons. Online High
School enrollment can’t assess enrollees if they don’t have valid bank accounts, students that
came from other schools. Students cannot edit their own information nor others, and also they
cannot view other student’s account. Students are allowed to evaluate only the faculty members
with the permission of administrator in a given period.
Administrators cannot update any information without using the control panel.
Administrators and staffs are strictly prohibited to update any information of the student or post
announcement and evaluation form in the control panel without the permission of the principal
and record custodian. But if they are given the permission they can update and also they can only
view the record payments of students from the enrollment.
Chapter 2
Review of Related Literature and Systems
Understanding of Enrollment Issues Is Critical
In An Enrollment Issues Handbook, there is an article that states Why an Understanding of
Enrollment Issues Is Critical. The first reason for this is that Enrollments are central to the
acquisition and distribution of financial resources. The number of enrolled students is the basis
on how much money the school can get. It will also be the basis on whether the school would
engage on projects that need a lot of money. The second reason is that Enrollment is the measure
of the university’s service. A small number of enrollees can lead to a small amount of funds and
therefore the service would also be a mediocre one. If the fund of the school is high, they can
afford to give quality service in terms of teaching, and in their facilities. The third reason is that
Enrollment is the basis for program planning. Academic programs and other programs are built
on expectation about enrollment growth and their resources. Knowing the number of students the
school has is one of the main factors on making the program for a school year. (Enrollment Hand
Book 2007, University of California)
Student Information System
The student information system was used at Westside Community Schools, a school
district in Omaha, NE. The reason that they used this system is provide more parent involvement,
they used Apple’s PowerSchool (a Web-based SIS) that gives parents access to data on their
child’s attendance, grades evaluations, and general activities. Students have the same functions
as well in terms of viewing. The effect when they implemented this system is that attendance at
schools is better, discipline reports are down, and instead of declining test scores they still
consistently stay above the national average. This system also has a parent-teacher conference
where parents can interact/communicate with the teacher to know more about his/her child’s
activities during school days. In all, it maintains parental involvement, getting information on
academic content and effective parent-teacher meetings. (Ken Bird, 2006)
New Module connects Moodle to Oracle Student Information System in Real Time
Moodle, software which is an open source learning management system where it’s
capabilities is to communicate with oracle in helping them develop the new Student Information
System. Student Administration Integration pack is a system which automates management
processes of higher education organizations providing administrative and educational systems.
The new tools of the system will provide continuous synchronization of course, student and
enrollment information between the two systems, “as opposed to having to manually export and
import the data – an extremely valuable function for managing constant drop/adds during course
enrollment periods each semester. (David Nagel, 2009)
Online Enrollment System
Modern day in which entails that money, effort and time are such vital things and they
are to be used efficiently. Modern technology makes life easier and faster such as internet which
enables us to transfer thousands of information in a short span of time, and with that we utilized
it in many ways. Many Universities around the world are already using and implementing Online
Enrolment. However, in some schools they are still using the manual system of enrolment in
which we all know that is very inconvenient and hassle on the part of the enrolees and staffs as
well. Every process of manual enrolment takes a lot of time especially when the school or
university has a great number of students, another problem is that school administration lacks
enrolment personnel especially in the accounting department.
The essay said a lot of
disadvantages of manual enrolment and made clear that online enrolment is the exact
opposite.(OPPapers.com, Computer Science)
HISD Launches online grade-viewing system
GradeSpeed, HISD’s grading system in which allows instant and constant viewing of
student grades, report cards and teacher advisories by students themselves and parents or
guardians. This online grading system allows a student to have two other account members to
view their grades and as well as their attendance records. The moment the teacher inputs the
information it is immediately connected in the student management system, this process allows
to greatly making the school-home communication process much faster than the traditional grade
viewing. The system also contributes to the halting of usual flood of class schedule changes.
General Manager of HISD also added that the system has to improve a lot depending upon the
problem that will arise once the system is implemented; they also want to make it user-friendly
to the students and especially to the parents. (Steve Mark, 2010)
Parents, Students may be able to view grades online
The Unified School District 336 administrators have been working on software and they
are training teachers how to use a system that would enable parents and students access to grades
in their desired time. Username and passwords will be issued to parents and students in order for
them to access and check on grades, daily assignments, attendance and disciplinary office
referrals, also parents may share the pass codes with the students, allowing them to have a
chance to monitor their own grades. The reason for this is to prevent students from failing and
making it easier for parents to know the status of their children and this will more be like student
accountability. (Andrea Albright, 2001)
Online Grade Books: Pros and Cons for Students, Parents and Teachers
Technology continually increases and a lot of things are subject to change because of
this, as they say that a thing that has advantages also has disadvantages. Schools are now
adapting to the trend in which they are utilizing grading system. The major benefit of these
grading systems is that they allow students and parents to be updated with the grades all
throughout their stay in the school and eliminating the wait in the distribution of report cards.
Also parents can monitor the performance of their child and do whatever is necessary to improve
them. Another benefit of this grading system is that they can be updated, in a matter of instant
information can easily be transferred, easy calculation of the grades and elimination of human
error for the system can compute for the grade. The disadvantages of these grading systems are
the sensitivity of the input, miscommunication may occur if there would be a wrong input and if
this may happen a lot the students might not see the system credible. Another disadvantage is
that server might go down due to unexpected reasons and this may give people hard time and this
might happen in worst times. (John Smith, 2007)
Chapter 3
Methodology, Results and Discussion
A. Requirement Analysis
UST high school’s population consisting of first year high school to fourth year high
school students communicate or interact with the school’s staffs and administrators manually.
From the time of enrolment to the end of the school year the staffs give information like the
student’s grades, section, schedule, and academic-related announcements manually through the
means of papers or saying it verbally. This type of procedure can lead to problems like a student
failing to remember an important announcement on a certain date or a student not knowing his
class standing because he lost his examination paper. To prevent this type of problems and to
increase students’ productivity and the high school department’s cohesiveness and fluidity, they
should have a webpage that the students can access to view their personal information like their
grades, section, and schedule. They need a webpage wherein the administrators have the
privilege to freely post announcements on their own or without any help from a technical
supervisor for the students to be well informed. They also need to have an online enrolment
system so that the time spent on the manual enrolment would be lessened.
B. Requirement Documentation
The product would be a student portal that can be accessible by the students with the
school’s staff and administrators given that they have an account. The staffs and administrators
would have special privileges of encoding the students’ information and posting announcements.
Students can view school activities, announcements, and their information in the webpage. The
information that the students can view include their grades, section, and schedule. Students will
also have the privilege of enrolling online through the use of the online enrolment feature of the
webpage. The webpage would be called the Student Portal. This will serve as a reliable and
effective source of interaction between the students and the administrators.
C. System Modeling
Identifying problems,
opportunities &
objectives
Determining Human
Information
Requirements
Analyzing System
Needs
Designing the
Recommended System
Developing and
Documenting Software
Testing and
Maintaining the
System
Implementing and
Evaluating the System
Figure 3
SDLC Waterfall
The researchers will be using the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) in the entire
project, to ensure completeness and accuracy of how the system should be developed and well
integrated to the standard procedures of the institute itself. The SDLC is divided into 7 stages
where as the researchers will show the activities that will be done during each stage.
Project Planning (Identifying problems, opportunities, and objectivities)
In the first stage, the researchers will observe the high school’s current system procedures
particularly on the grading, sectioning, enrolment system. After observing, the researchers
already identified the problems, opportunities and objectives. But the problem is immediately
addressed by STePS which is the High School Student Portal Project.
Determining Human Information Requirements
Next phase is the activities that will be done by the researchers is determining the human
needs to the system such as what the administrator of the student portal needs to know to run the
system and maintain it. Before the researchers can determine the needs of the administrator, there
should be an analysis of the current system particularly on who’s involved and how the process
should be done.
Analyzing System Needs
Third stage is where the researchers determine what the system needs to perform; it will
include methods such as a data flow diagram and a use case diagram to know the inputs, process,
output and sequence of events of the system’s function.
Designing the Recommended System
The fourth stage will have an interaction between the researchers and users of the system,
where the researchers will develop the system with a web paged user interface integrated with a
database. This webpage will have a logical design which will have procedures on how to use the
system for the administrators. Lastly the researchers will create backup controls and procedures
to eliminate system problems in the future. These procedures will be done also by using use case
diagrams and data flow diagrams to know the sequence or flow of data.
Developing and Documenting Software
In this stage, the researchers will document manuals, read me files or help files for the
developed software.
Testing and Maintaining the System
The sixth stage will test the system where the researchers will do all of the testing. To
identify the problems in the system and will be fixed as soon as it is identified. Series of tests
will be conducted by using sample data and actual data from the high school.
Implementing and Evaluating the System
The last phase is where the researchers will implement the system in the High School and
as well train the administrators on using and maintaining the software and system itself.
D. Data Gathering
The researchers constructed a letter of request signed by their thesis adviser, department
chairman, and dean. They submit the letter to the STePS (Santo Tomas E-service Provider) and
accepted it by the director father Dingel. As soon as the researcher was accepted they were
referred to the Data Center and were able to conduct an interview with the Assistant Director,
Mr. Poly T. Blanco. After conducting the interview the researchers acquired the informations
about the department’s profile that is needed for the early chapters of the project.
The project is the student portal of UST High School therefore the researchers must
observe and review the current system of the institute. The researchers also had a letter of request
given to the principal but was given to the school secretary, Mr. Emmanuel Batulan and
forwarded to the record custodian, Sir Dan. From conducting an interview the researchers had
gathered the informations such as the current processes of high school regarding enrolment,
grading, and schedules of sections.
For the project documentation the researchers are required to know the hardware and
software which will be use in developing the project. The researchers have a face to face
interview with their respondents through objective types of questions that will direct us on the
needs of the user and the system.
E. Hardware
The researchers will use a desktop computer in developing the software. The specifications
of the server are the following:

Poweredge PE2950

Intel (R) Xeon (R) CPU 5310 1.6Ghz

16GB Memory

QLA2432 Fibre Channel Adapter

NetXtreme II BCM5708 gigabit ethernet
These specs are provided by the STePS for this is what they used for developing their
software-based projects and for storing their databases. This will also be planned as to be used by
the researchers.
F. Software
Enterprise Linux (server 5.3) is the operating system that is going to be used due to
circumstances that the researchers are going to work under the software development department
of STePS to eliminate incompatibility with their operating system. Also the database is oracle
10(10.2.0.4) and the software for developing the webpage is JDeveloper 10.1.35.
G. Data Flow Diagram
D1
High School Database
D2
1
recordInformation
Principal
Retrieve
Student
Information
Student Affairs
registeredVehicles
studentInformation
D3
Admin Account
adminAccount
schoolEvent
3
2
Receive
School
Activities
Admin.
schoolActivities
D4
Login Request
schoolActivities
Update/Post/
Evaluation
content
Student Account
studentAccount
Login Request
Student
4
Student
View/Enroll/
Evaluate
webInformation
studentPayEnroll
evaluationResult
Figure 4
Student Portal System
D1
High School Database
Admin.
PROCESS 1 – Retrieve Student Information
D1
High School Database
D1
1.1
1.2
Get Student
Records
Get
Registered
Vehicles
recordInformation
recordInformation
High School Database
registeredVehicles
registeredVehicles
1.3
Retrieve
Complete
Information
studentInformation
Figure 5
DFD-Exploded Process 1
PROCESS 2 – Receive School Activities
2.1
Principal
schoolEvent
2.2
announcementInfo
Making of
Activity
Date of
Activity
Admin.
Figure 6
DFD-Exploded Process 2
schoolActivities
PROCESS 3 – Update/Post/Encode content
Announcement
Admin.
Login Request
3.1
3.3
schoolActivities
Verify
Username
and
Password
Post
Announcements
Evaluation Form
3.2
Encode
Evaluation
for Faculty
Announcement
AdminUserInfo
D3
Admin Account
Evaluation Form
3.4
Update
Webpage
Content
studentInformation
Figure 7
DFD-Exploded Process 3
webInformation
PROCESS 4 – Student View/Enroll/Evaluate
Valid Request
webInformation
Student
Login Request
7.1
7.2
7.3
Verify
Username
and
Password
View
Webpage
Content
Evaluate
Faculty
Member
7.4
webInformation
Valid Request
Pay
Enrollment
Fee
evaluationResult
StudentPayEnroll
Admin.
D1
High School Database
Figure 8
DFD-Exploded Process 4
H. Use-Case Diagram
Accessing Student Portal
ID and Password
<<extend>>
Log-in Request
Announcement
Student
Adminstrator
Profile
<<include>>
Student Portal Content
<<include>>
<<include>>
Grades
<<include>>
<<include>>
Section
Enrollment
Figure 9
Use-Case Student Portal
Evaluation
Online Enrollment
Section/Schedule
<<extend>>
Enroll
<<extend>>
<<extend>>
Student
Student Profile
Payment Fee
Accounting Personnel
Bank Account
Transfer Data
Administrator
Encode Data
<<include>>
Student Portal Content
Figure 10
Use-Case Online Enrollment
References:
Enrollment Issues Handbook. University of California, Office of the President. Available at:
http://www.ucop.edu/planning/documents/enrhandbook2007.pdf
Ken Bird (2006). Student Information Systems - How Do You Spell Parental Involvement? S-I-S
Available at: http://thejournal.com/articles/2006/02/01/student-information-systems--how-doyou-spell-parental-involvement-sis.aspx
David Nagel (2009). Campus technology. New Module Connects Moodle to Oracle Student
Information System in Real Time. Available at
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/04/08/new-module-connects-moodle-to-oraclestudent-information-system-in-real-time.aspx
OPPapers.com, Computer Science. Online Enrollment System. Available at
http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Online-Enrollment-System/424298
Steve Mark (2010). HISD Launches online grade-viewing system. Available at
http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/bellaire/news/article_6fd2b66c-4726-54e8-94180d0e94141eed.html
Andrea Albright (2001). Parents, students may be able to view grades online. Available at
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4179/is_20010122/ai_n11759066/?tag=content;col1.
John Smith (2007). Online Grade Books: pros and Cons for Students, Parents and Teachers.
Available at
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/443105/online_grade_books_pros_and_cons_for.html?
cat=9s