Design and development of a tertiary institutions decision support system (TIDSS)

Abstract

In Nigeria and some other developing countries, the conventional process of choosing a university to attend and the courses to study are usually stressful, ineffective on prospective students. Some applicants go through a whole year thinking and trying to find the right course to march their areas of interest, and the right university to attend in order to obtain the very best education. Some end up choosing the wrong course of study and subsequently, the wrong university. This affects the academic performance and future of such students and the nation at large. This paper presents the design and development of a Tertiary Institutions Decision Support System (TIDSS) to solve the major problem of "university/course choice confusion". The TIDSS offers decision support, consultancy, repositories, current helpful information, effective search engine, virtual tours of universities (where available) and independent platform for various users in any part of the world, thus, eliminating/reducing the cost and risk of travels in search of schools to attend. The system was modeled with the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which is the globally accepted standard for modeling object-oriented systems. In addition, Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP) server-side language, which is an open source server-side scripting language that is freely available for download was used to implement the system. MySQL database server was used to manage all the data in the application. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Brochure was used extensively in order to give current information about the courses and universities available in Nigeria.

Keyword: Tertiary institutions, Decision Support System, Unified Modeling Language, Nigeria

International Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences, 6(2): 206-212, 2010