Web based Student Examination Management System for Open University of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) is the premier open and distance learning institution in Sri Lanka where students can pursue their studies through Open and Distance Learning methodologies. It consists with four faculties. Those are Education, Engineering, Natural Science, Humanities and Social Science. Within each faculty there are different departments. These departments conduct various kinds of study programmes, such and Post Graduate, Degree, Diploma and Certificate programmes. All together there are 62 distinct programmes running under these departments.Currently, there are more than 35,000 students studying at the OUSL, who are being served by eight regional centres and eighteen study centres located around the country. The objectives of this projectareto identify the problems in the currentexamination system of OUSL and to provide a solution based on Information Communication Technology (ICT) to improve efficiency, speed up the examination process anddecision making.The main existing problems of the current examination system are the criteria achieved for students’ calculating the final examination eligibility, calculating final grading and the students’ programme completion.The marks entering process of final and continues assignments (CA) is also not distributed among the departments.Due to this thefinal examination calling and final result releasing get dallied. In order to overcome the problems associated with the current examination system, this new system was designed and developed.The aims of the new examination system would beentering marks, course structure management, calculating the final examination eligibility, generate exam admission card, calculating final grading, giving web portal to check student eligibility and final result. This is an online system which gives an online web presence for all the stakeholders for their routing activities. Extreme programming method (XP) was used as the methodology of developing of this web portal, that as many advanced features. This system was developed using Object Oriented Programming (OOP)techniques to satisfy the system requirements. C# and ASP.Net was used as the languages and Visual Studio.Net 2010 as a development environment. Microsoft SQL2008 R2 Server was used to create and manipulate data. Currently the developed system is deployed at OUSL, which has been used in several successful completions of student examination activities during the last month.