Web-based College Admission Test

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study In the academe, the mission of every college or university is to equip the students with the proper knowledge to be globally competitive. Part of this mission is to ensure that in order for the student to have it is to test the readiness of the student and guide the student to the right course to take. These tests can be in the form of interviews, assessing the high school grades, and conducting an aptitude test. Collectively, they are called “College Admission Test”. Admission test is considered to be the most important part in the operations of the college or university. Everything starts in the admitting of students. The same way, the proper way of admitting the students will lead to the success of the student and also with the college or university. Most colleges and universities consider applicants’ scores on college admission tests when deciding whom to accept. These tests, also called college entrance exams, are designed to measure students’ skills and help colleges evaluate how ready students are for college-level work. Admission tests apply a common standard to everyone. This helps colleges evaluate and compare the preparation of students who graduated from different high schools. All schools do not offer the same academic programs, learning environments or even expectations. Colleges look at test scores, along with high school grades and courses, to see how well an applicant prepared college-level work. The importance of test scores in the admission process varies from college to college and depends on an institution’s admission approach and policies. Each college has its own policy. Pangasinan State University was created by virtue of Presidential Decree 1497 which was promulgated on June 11, 1978 and took effect on July 1, 1979. Starting its operation in 1979, it had two Colleges of Agriculture located in Sta. Maria and San Carlos City; two Colleges of Arts and Trades situated in Lingayen and Asingan; a College of Education in Bayambang; and a College of Fisheries in Binmaley. All the collegiate courses in the afore cited seven integrated component colleges of the University were government-supported and were directly under the supervision of then Department of Education, Culture and Sports.
PSU Lingayen Campus, as most Pangasinenses know it today, is the result of fusion of the two independent colleges in Lingayen namely the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Technology. Like other components of the Pangasinan State University, Lingayen Campus underwent difficult process of transformation and experienced some painful periods of transition.
Pangasinan State University continually endeavors with passion to uphold high educational standards and to be responsive towards local and global changes. With this endeavor, the institution must respond with these changes by maximizing the use of technology while reducing the efforts to perform the usual task. Maximizing the use of technology will allow the entire institution to perform the usual task in a more effective and efficient way.
The passion of the institution has triggered the developer to contribute to the improvement of the institution in terms of managing admission and testing. The idea was to propose and integrate a Web-based College Admission Test with the admission and testing processes currently used by the institution. The proposed system will help the administration, as well as the Admission and Testing Department to improve the way they manage the processes in entrance examination in a more efficient way. The system is also expected to reduce the amount of work allotted by the Admission officer in maintaining student’s personal information and checking of examination papers, and benefits the management and focus on strategic planning and management that could contribute to the decision making of the entire organization.

Conceptual Framework
The developer made use of IPO model to show and describe the inputs required on the process in order to come up with the final output. Figure 1.1 shows the IPO model for developing the Web-based College Admission Test of Pangasinan State University, Lingayen Campus.
The input as shown in the figure includes College Admission Test processes, the functional and non – functional requirements and the features of the Web-based College Admission Test.
The processes are the phases of the Agile Methodology, specifically the Scrum. The Scrum Agile Model is consist of three basic phases namely, pre - game phase, development phase and the post – game phase.
After integrating the input and processes together, the developer came up with a system Web-based College Admission Test.

Statement of Objective
The main objective of the developer is to design and develop a Web-based College Admission Test for Pangasinan State University Lingayen Campus to speed up the Admission Test for incoming freshman students.
Specifically, the project study sought to:
1. describe the existing admission test processes of Pangasinan State University Lingayen Campus in terms of:
a. Scheduling of examination;
b. Personnel Information Management;
c. Applicant’s Management;
d. Management of Examination Result
e. Management of Interview Passers; and,
f. Reports Generation.
2. identify the functional and non-functional requirements;
3. describe the features of the system, and;
4. test the usability of the Web-based College Admission Test.

Significance of the Study The developer aimed to design and develop a system which will help the users to perform their task in a fast yet reliable way. Thus, upon finishing the system, the following are expected to benefit from the said system:
Pangasinan State University. The system will enhance the way the company manages its admission testing while maximizing the use of modern technology and the internet as well. This allows the Admission and Testing Department to streamline the typical process conducted manually and help them concentrate on strategic management of their admission and testing processes.
Administrators. The system provides the capabilities for the administrators to monitor the admission and testing activities being conducted by the admission officer such as encoding of students information who applied for entrance examination and allows them to monitor the applicants.
Admission Officer. Upon the implementation of the system, it will help the Admission officer in terms of uploading of entrance examination schedule, encoding of students information who applied for entrance examination, computerized examination, and posting of applicants who passed the entrance examination. In addition to this, it also allows the Admission Officer to store and maintain applicant’s records, and omits the paper based type of examination.
Applicants. The system will also benefit the applicants in terms taking their entrance examination. The system will also automatically generate the examination scores on behalf of the admission officer. This would provide an ease on their part because the student could utilize the web to know the result of the examination.
Developer. The current study benefited the developer since he was able to improve his skills, abilities and analytical thinking by applying all the knowledge that he gained in designing a business solution for the school.
Future Developers. The current study will serve as the basis of the future researchers / developers who decided to conduct similar study. They can develop and design a system based on the features and platform of the current system and improve it based on the client’s requirements.

Scope and Limitation This project study aimed to design and develop a Web-based College Admission Test for Pangasinan State University Lingayen Campus which focuses on the improvement of Admission and Testing related activities and student record management. Specifically, the system allows the admission officer to update, maintain and verify vital information such as personal and educational background of students, high school grade and information, and other related information about the student. The system also includes the ability to create examination schedules, examination items and categories. In relation with this, the system will allow the students to take and experience entrance examination using a computerized test. The system also generates report relevant to the Admission and testing department functionalities.
The system is a web – based project which allows the Admission officer to maintain Admission and testing processes in a computer minimizing the use of a paper based transactions. Security features are also included on the system. Admission officer can use their employee number and password to access their Admission portal and Students can use the examination portal using username and password only at given time and through local area network only. As required by the Admission and Testing department the generation of list of interview passers shall not be included. The generation of interview passers in each department is handled by the respective department. Test items are considered to be confidential.

Definition of Terms The following terminologies were defined and used operationally all throughout the study.
Functional Requirements. These are the features of the web-based college admission test based on the requirements specified by the client.
Information. Refers to the requirements gathered from the Pangasinan State University Lingayen Campus that can be used as the basis for the features of the web-based college admission test.
Information System. A form of system intended to perform task related on storing, maintaining and retrieving information relevant to the processes involved in Admission and Testing Department.
Non – functional Requirements. These are the qualities of the Web-based College Admission Test that must be satisfied to ensure the security of the data.
Web-based. A term used to describe a service which can only be accessed with the aid of a local area network.
System. This is the integration of related components such as hardware, software, procedure, data and people to perform a specific task.