ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1. 1. Background of the Study

The continuous advancement in the information and communication technology as contributed a lot to the universe, making life easier for individual, organization, institution and every field now see the importance of ICT as the world goes global and tend towards ubiquitous computing. The rate of time-consuming task and tedious activities has reduced as a result of this advancement because many tasks can now be automated with the help of technology improving the manual way of processing, storing, accessing, communicating and providing information from one person to another or among group of people. The role of information is inevitable in our daily lives. Information is extremely important to the successful functioning of any organization. The constant and steady stream of communication and information helps to build credibility and reflect a sense of transparency in our daily interaction. Various people assemble together for the purpose of communicating with one another towards achieving the organization’s goal (Rohan et al., 2016).

Event forecast or scheduling is a very broad term that can be applied to all kinds of tasks. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the verb schedule as “to make up a schedule” and defines the noun schedule as “a plan for performing work or achieving an objective, specifying the order and allotted time for each part”. The components of a schedule vary from one type of establishment to another. In a technical support business, such a component would be forwarding incoming calls to an available agent on a first come first serve basis. Likewise, a city’s public transport system would usually consist of three inter-related components. First, the creation of timetables for buses and subway trains which the public can refer to; second, assigning vehicles to certain routes which the vehicle must complete within a time block; third, designating drivers to each bus and subway train. Scheduling in the academia primarily deals with classes, extracurricular activities and term examinations. Entities involved within academic event scheduling like scheduling classes include courses, faculty etc. which should be optimally assigned to each other in order to create a proper event schedule (Roy et al., 2016).

In today’s world there is a great need of automating things. As the world has become faster, the manpower required to the work is reduced and smart work is always appreciated. Everyone knows importance of automated academic forecast of event generator and everything should be done in time and accuracy, thus the need for an automated forecast of event generating. The research focuses on forecast of event generator for the Nigerian Army College of Environmental Science and Technology (NACEST), to automate the current manual method of formulating annual forecast of event (Suraj et al., 2015).

1.2     Statement of the Problem

Event forecasting/scheduling is the activity of finding a suitable time for an event such as exams, lectures periods, etc. It is an important part of event planning that is usually carried out at its beginning stage. In general, event forecasting/scheduling must take into account what impact particular dates of the event could have on the success of the event. The existing method of formulating NACEST academic calendar have been manual. This in turn has posed a lot of stress on the formulating team. On this note we propose a web based academic forecast of event generator.

1.3     Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this research work is to design and implement a web based academic forecast of event generator.

The objectives include the following;

i. To review related literatures pointing to automated academic forecast of event generator.

ii. To design the system using UML controls.

iii. To implement the system designed in (ii) above using HTML, CSS, MySQL and PHP.

iv. To test the system designed for data integrity and security.

1.4     Significance of the Study

This study will give ease to the formulation of forecast of event for NACEST.

The software is relevant in the following ways:

i.   The designed software will aid in carrying out the generation of forecast of event in an automated format.

ii.  The designed software will be useful in easing the work load on computer operator designing the manual forecast of event.

iii. The designed software will be useful in terms of data security, as records can only be accessed by the management designated administrator via their login details.

1.5     Scope of the Study

This research work covers the design and implementation of an automated academic forecast of event generator for the Nigerian Army College of Environment Science and Technology (NACEST).

1.6     Definition of Terms

Academic calendar: Academic calendar is a schedule of all of the events that occur in an academic year. These events may include examination dates, spring break or reading week and the last day of the semester.

Calendar: a chart or series of pages showing the days, weeks, and months of a particular year, or giving particular seasonal information.

Event Calendar:  An Event Calendar allows Events to be organized into meaningful, descriptive groupings that help to provide insights into and collaboration about a specific Data Point or range of Data Points. The Events feature allows a user to see how a Metric's values change based on external occurrences

Event scheduling: is the activity of finding a suitable time for an event such as meeting, conference, trip, etc. It is an important part of event planning that is usually carried out at its beginning stage.

Event: a thing that happens or takes place, especially one of importance.

Forecast: a statement of what is judged likely to happen in the future, based on information you have now

Internet: Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is also known as the network of networks.

Software: These are set of instructions that are designed to solve a specific problem. Software is made up of data and instructions. There are two categories of software; System software and Application software.

System: A system is a set of detailed methods, procedures and routines created to carry out a specific activity, perform a duty, or solve a problem

Web Application: A web application is application software that runs on a web server, unlike computer-based software programs that are run locally on the operating system of the device. Web applications are accessed by the user through a web browser with an active network connection.