Knowledge Management Information Technology

ONLINE UNIVERSITY PORTAL OF MGT SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0INTRODUCTION

In recent years, there has been continuing trend among youths to pursue higher education in their quest to become better qualified and better skilled. Acquiring knowledge have become the main objectives for students in the universities. Knowledge is necessary to make informed decisions, especially, in critical situations. Knowledge and knowledge management in any organization are crucial to give it a competitive edge in today’s challenging and globalized environment. Knowledge should present as the value in the academic environment. Knowledge management is become the hot topic in the area of information technology at the campus. New technologies, especially, the Internet have made a huge impact on knowledge management and information dissemination in education. The web portal as a knowledge management system is very popular topic in many organizations including universities. Universities have been at the forefront of website development, which later led to the development of web portals to provide more compressive links to information resources.

The remaining of this chapter as following, in section One Background of study

Will be discussed, problem statement will be highlighted in section Two, purpose of study will be in section Three, research objectives will be discussed in section Four, scope of study will be highlighted in section Five, significance of project in section Six and project organization will be discussed in section Seven .

1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Since the mid-1990s the web portal has become a hot topic everywhere because of the rapid development of the web browser according to robins & sochats, (1999).An innovative website which gives online public access to the department’s research project. Events and collaboration launched (2009). The research portal will expand as new research project are added to it.

In the late 1990s the web portal was a web IT buzzword. After the proliferation of web browsers in the late-1990s many companies tried to build or acquire a portal to attempt to obtain a share of an Internet market. The web portal gained special attention because it was, for many users, the starting point of their web browsing if it was set as their home page. The content and branding of a portal could change as internet companies merged or were acquired. Netscape became a part of America Online, the Walt Disney Company launched Go.com, IBM and others launched Prodigy, and Excite and Home became a part of AT&T Corporation during the late 1990s. Lycos was said to be a good target for other media companies, such as CBS.

In Africa web portal is an application that primarily integrates the organization’s information and provides users with a single interface. A student portal is a web based interface to access personalized information, resources, applications, and education/academic options with which students can reach a range of internal and

External sources through a network connection in a password-protected setting. According to Eisler, (2003) other than providing a personalized and customizable user interface for accessing both internal and external information, a campus portal also provides the opportunity to create gateways to information and points of access for constituent groups Bajec,(2005) noted that today, almost all universities are either developing or purchasing portal solutions for their needs. Despite the growing interest in universities adopting portal technologies; studies addressing the issue of its impact on e-learning are still very limited.

University portal management system is online application portal where all you universities information lives according to Mpemr, (2008).Now you students and visitor can have access to real-time information about performance and administrative decision from anywhere in the world, portals which relied on rise to a need for web access points which either required frames or sites that had to offer non-frames alternatives. See: same-source policy in web browsers. According to Guzman (2005), a Web portal is a means by which translators can get training in localization tools. Normally, the portal (e.g. Blackboard) provides a number of assignments with instructions on how (and why) to perform different tasks with different localization tools. The course facilitator is available to help (rather than teach) participants in real time by using a chat room at scheduled times.

The concept of an Internet Portal is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is seen as collection of information and services of an enterprise or as a community accessible to members through a single secure and customizable Web site. According to Dias, (2001) An Enterprise Portal is a user centric enterprise-wide web-based system that incorporates a sophisticated integration of all types of information content and services. A portal may use a search engine API to permit users to search intranet content as opposed to extranet content by restricting which domains may be searched. Apart from this common search engines feature Rao, (2006) web portals may offer other services such as e-mail, news, stock quotes, and information from databases and even entertainment content. Portals provide a way for enterprises and organizations to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have been different web entities at various URLs. The features available may be restricted by whether access is by an authorized and authenticated user employee, member or an anonymous site visitor.

1.2PROBLEMSTATEMENT

Statement of problem poor connection between universities and visitors and also its difficulties relationship between faculties and users. The central research problem is to ascertain what factors should be taken into account during the design and development of a Web portal for academics.

1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The overall aim of this study is to develop an information system for managing the university portal system and solve problems caused by the absence of the system and use of manual procedures.

1.4THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

1.To study the overall university portal services and how they managed.

2.To propose an information system that manages the complexity of university portal operations.

3.To implement the proposed system in order to improve portal operations and solve the stated problems.

1.5SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of this project or the system is constrained to university portal operations. This system manages functions like management of technical services for customers which includes scheduling and payment records, the management of portal services and their records. It is six month project and the information system will be developed in Frontier University.

1.6 SIGNIFICACY OF THE PROJECT

This project will get better most necessary information which relates university portal in efficiency manner. The significance of this project is for the university portal to be integrated with the university IT infrastructure, both internal and external. A university portal can be viewed as a single point, which provides comprehensive access to information on courses, data search tools, educational resources, interactive teaching materials, communication tools etc. the project will be useful for the students and researchers who are willing to develop such systems.

1.6PROJECT ORGANIZATION

The remaining of this project /research will be as following chapter two will discuss the literature review, requirement analysis will be highlighted in chapter Three, system design will be discussed in chapter four, and system development will be in

Chapter five and recommendation and also conclusion discussed in chapter six.

The project will continue six months from September to January. And each month is assigned to submit one chapter to the supervisor till January in which the whole system will be presented to the panel.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0INTRODUCTION

This chapter consists of discussion of the previous work related to online university portal includes: Web Portal, Existing system and Gap analysis and Direction.

2.1 WEB PORTAL

A web portal is most often one specially-designed Web page at a website which brings information together from diverse sources in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information a portal; often, the user can configure which ones to display. Variants of portals include and intranet "dashboards" for executives and managers. The extent to which content is displayed in a "uniform way" may be more or less depending on the intended user and the intended purpose as well as the diversity of the content. Very often design emphasis is on a certain "metaphor" for configuring and customizing the presentation of the content and the chosen implementation framework and/or code libraries. In addition, the role of the user in an organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the portal configuration.

Web portals are general KMS that provide the facility for organizations or companies to share, create, exchange and reuse knowledge. Portals support knowledge management processes. Generally, a portal defines as a web site with a highlighted feature: provides quick access to services and personalized information. Pickett and Harmre, (2002) stated a portal is a gateway to resources in accessible networks such as Internet or intranet. Thus, a site may include many web pages or even a simple web page, which presents users a static view of available resources and information. Researchers who worked on web portal admitted that there is no unique way for definition portal until now. Bajec, (2005) stated that a portal is a connection, content, commerce, and community. Santa Barbara City College described portal as a knowledge management implementation to provide access to personalized information. In fact, it is fascinating that different people have different definitions of a web portal. Some researchers described a web portal as a gateway to information such as: Looney & Lyman, (2000) indicated that, basically, web portals collect a sort of applicable information resources into a single, "one-stop” Web page; this function helps to prevent users from feeling lost on the Web.

According to Aragones & Hart, (2002) stated that a portal provides a starting point for users to access and explore information on the Www. Yahoo www.yahoo.comis a general portal; a university website homepage is a specialized portal. Another source had declared that portals integrate varied channels as a central point of information. Thus, essentially, a web portal is a gateway or single access point to resources on the Internet. Vance, D. M. (1997) some researchers consider a web portal as a user–centric community based tool for example consumer portals like Google! Some portals provide information for a special group of user with specific interest. When other users with similar interests browse a web portal, a virtual community is formed. Hence, a web portal has to provide information and facilitate communication to

community so that they can share knowledge and experiences, hold discussion forums, etc.

According to Dias, (2001) mentioned that it is important for portal users to be able to connect with everyone who share common interests. It means that an efficient web portal is a community–based system to manage and present information and other resources.

2.2EXISTING SYSTEMS

Web portals as an essential knowledge management system in the universities, this paper starts with some basic definition of knowledge, knowledge management and web portal.

Knowledge Definition

To have a precise definition of knowledge management system (KMS), it is important, first look at knowledge contents. Knowledge is derived from data and information. Data is a collection of words, numbers, observations or facts, which are not meaningful. Data can be converted to information when it is put in a meaningful framework. Finally, knowledge is derived from information, which has been validated to be true. Vance (1997) defined information as data that includes meaningful contents, while knowledge is defined as authenticated information.

According to Alavi & Leidner (1999) assumed that knowledge is information in the individual mind. It means that it is subjective information that states facts, procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observations and judgments.

Knowledge Management System (KMS)

The important issue that is related to managing knowledge is about capturing and integrating knowledge. It means knowledge is not so valuable and useful if it cannot be shared. Therefore, in the network of computer systems with features for communication and information sharing, the methods for managing and integrating knowledge, improve the effect and efficiency. Information system is established in organizations to facilitate the collection, integration and dissemination of knowledge. These systems are in fact, the knowledge management systems (KMS).

KMS must have the capability of responding to changing situation fast and must be able to assist in inventing; decision making and productivity .KMS is multi-functions system.

Productive KMS includes technology as well as culture and organizational issues. It means that the mix of cultural and organizational with technology can form a successful KMS. In some companies, there should be a culture shift to change the staff’s attitude about sharing their knowledge and information. It should be borne in mind that quality and quantity of knowledge is the main issue for developing KMS.

Web Portal

Web portals are general KMS that provide the facility for organizations or companies to share, create, exchange and reuse knowledge. Portals support knowledge management processes. Generally, a portal defines as a web site with a highlighted feature: provides quick access to services and personalized information.

Pickett & Harmre, (2002) stated a portal is a gateway to resources in accessible networks such as Internet or intranet. Thus, a site may include many web pages or even a simple web page, which presents users a static view of available resources and information. Researchers who worked on web portal admitted that there is no unique way for definition portal until now.

2.3 GAP ANALYSIS AND DIRECTION

The sample previous system of was a program used to help a manager make more informative and profitable management decisions. This program in a database application language, used to record company detail and store it in a database, which could be used as a benchmark for analyzing future deals.

University portal using Microsoft access database management system and Visual basic for application programming of old version and it is desktop application.

The basic difference between this system and our new system is: Our system will be developed Somalia using Microsoft SQL 2008, and ASP.Net language. And also the reason why we develop the new system is related to overcome the constraints of the current manual system being used in portal we took it for the case study.

developer /author year

project name

Method

Limitations

Alavi & Leidner (1999)

KMS

Java

Not valuable and useful if it cannot be shared

Pickett & Harmre, (2002)

Web portal system

ASP.Net/Java

No more info

Aragones (2002)

CMS

PHP

No access in info

2.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY

In this chapter we detailed the information gathered in understanding the subject university portal information system mainly the definition of the system, information system and the need for online portal information system and also some examples of the previous work related to portal university information system that might serve as a guide for this project.

CHAPTER THREE

REQUIREMENT ANAYLYSIS

3.1 INTRODUCTION

In the last two chapters, we talked about the introduction and the literature review of university portal. This is the third chapter that covers the system requirement analysis in to two main parts namely; the first one is the requirement analysis that consists of preliminary investigation, data gathering techniques, modeling tools and the feasibility study. After talking in detail the requirement of the old system, we come to the second part of the chapter which is user requirement analysis. We cover the proposed system, user requirement specification.

3.2 USER REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS

Requirement analysis is the analysis phase of the SDLC; usually in this phase preliminary investigation is conducted justifying the reasons for developing the system, and also identifying problems or opportunities. During this phase, the current system is carefully assessed, requirements of the old system is modeled using DFDs with the help of Functional Decomposition Diagram. The analysis is the bridge between the current and the requirement of new system, the end product of this phase is modeling the new proposed system.

3.3 PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

Preliminary investigation is to collect all data needs in the organization and the developer will allow to simply developing their requirements.

Main Reasons for Systems Projects Preliminary Investigation

A.Project Level

Improved Service

More Information

3.3.1 ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE

The university portal system is one of the first famous portals in Mogadishu. The portal is privately owned as the name illustrates. The portal was setup in mid-1990s.

The web portal has become a hot topic everywhere because of the rapid development of the web browser an innovative website which gives online public access to the department’s research project. The research portal will expand as new research project are added to it.

3.3.2 Current system

University portal system uses currently a simple Desktop computerized system that can manage some of the basic requirements of the portal including Registration student, visitor Registration.

3.3.3 The limitations of the current system

This current system is limited by storage space; it has not the potential to store much more information.

3.4 DATA GATHERING PROCEDURES

DATA GATHERING

When the system is developed, it is hoped to take over the data from the current system effectively. Through this gathering data carried two steps of data collection.

Interview and

Observation.

Interview

A. Before the administration of the interview

The researcher will obtain an authority letter from the faculty of computer science and technology of FRONTIER UNIVERSITY to authorize the researchers to carry out their research.

B. During the Administration of the interview

The researcher will request the respondents the following: (1) To sign the informed consent,(2) To answer all questions hence should not leave any item unanswered; (3) To avoid biases and to be objective in answering the interview.

C. After the Administration of the interview

The data collected will be organized, collated, summarized, statistically treated and drafted in tables.

Observation

This project was used observation as data gathering technique which is a collection method used to gather detailed information about a situation or event. Observation data is used to describe the setting, activities, participants, and the meaning of the observations from the observer's perspective. Observation data should be factual, accurate, and detailed, but not so detailed as to include irrelevant or trivial information that makes the description difficult to understand. The best observational data allows the reader to fully understand the situation.

3.4.1 Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs)

Within the analysis phase of the SDLC, it is common in the soft engineering discipline to model the requirement elicited from users. Therefore, the two most popular modeling tools are the DFDs for structured analysis and The UML for object oriented modeling. In our case, we use the structured analysis-the DFDs.

3.4.2Data Flow Diagram (DFD) is analysis tool used in structured process modeling which involves graphically representing the functions, or processes which capture, manipulate, store, and distribute data between system and its environment and even components in the system.

Data flow definitions and symbols

Data flow: can be understood as data in motion moving from one place in a system to another, such as data from customer order, a query from database.

Data store: refers to data in rest such as data in a folder, one or more computer based files or a notebook. It may contain data from a customer, a student etc.

Process is a unit of work that operates on the data. The process may be automated or manual. The symbol for a process is a rounded rectangle.

External Entity is a source or destination of data. The external agent occurs outside of the system of processes. An external agent is depicted by an overlapping rectangle.

Several different versions of DFDs exist, but they all serve the same purpose. In this project will use popular version called the Gane and Sarson symbol set which is shown in Figure 1.1.

Process

Data Flow

Data Store

External Entity

CONTEXT DIAGRAM

Level Zero: university portal of Management System

Level 1: Receive Portal Requested Order (1)

Level 2: Provide service (1.2)

Level 3: order service (2)

Level 4: pay payment (3)

3.5 FEASIBILITY STUDY

Feasibility study is the process used for identifying if the problem can be solved or not solved, determining objectives, and assessing the range of cost and benefits associated with several alternatives for solving problem. Feasibility studies are important firstly to assess the feasibility of an application.

All projects are feasible given unlimited resources and infinite time. But the development of the software is plagued by the scarcity of the resource and difficult delivery rates. It is both necessary and prudent to evaluate the feasibility of a project at the earliest possible time. Key considerations that are involved on the feasibility analysis:-

Technical feasibility

Technical feasibility centers on the existing manual system of the test management process and to what extend it can support the system. According the feasibility analysis procedure the technical feasibility of the system is analyzed and the technical requirements such as software facilities, procedure, inputs are identified. It is also one of the important phases of the system development activities.

The system offers greater levels of user friendliness combined with greater processing speed, therefore, the cost of maintenance can be reduced. Since, processing speed is very high and word is reduced in the maintenance point of view management convinces that the project is operationally feasible.

Since we are converting the manual data into an automated data, the technical feasibility that we need is sufficient software and hardware in order to make the new system more effective that manual system. In this section we will explain all hardware and software needed to solve these problems.

OPTIONS

Descriptions

Quantity

Price

1

Labtop (Toshiba, Dell, Hp, LG, acceretc )

CPU : Dual core, core I 3,core i 5 etc

HDD : 500GB, 360GB, 200GB etc

RAM : 6GB, 4GB, 2GB etc

Input device : Scanner

Output device : Printer

1

$ 850

2

Pentium 4 Personal Computer (PC)

CPU : Dual core

HDD : 500GB, 360GB, 200GB etc

RAM : 6GB, 4GB, 2GB etc

Input device : Scanner

Output device : Printer

1

$650

1-Hardware

TABLE 1

2- Software

OPTIONS

Descriptions

Quantity

Price

1

Window 7 Genuine ( Ultimate, Home premium etc)

Office 2007 Genuine /Office 2010

SQL 2008 Genuine

Antivirus ( Kaspresky, AVG, Norton etc )

1

$ 200

2

Window XP sp1

Office 2003

SQL 2000,2005 etc

Deepfreeze

1

$100

TABLE 2

Operational Feasibility

User needs an application which will remove the above mentioned problems that, the user is facing. The user wants an application, which will reduce the bulk of paperwork, provide ease of work, flexibility, fast record finding modifying, adding, removing and generating the reports.

Activity

Expected Cost

Period

Full training

$200

2 weeks

Partial training

$100

1 week of less

TABLE 3

Economic feasibility

Economic analysis is the most frequently used for evaluation of the effectiveness of the system more commonly known as cost/benefit analysis. The procedure is to determine the benefit and saving that are expected from a system and compare them with costs, decisions is made to design and implement the system. This part of feasibility study gives the top management the economic justification for the new system.

Types of feasibility

Description

Expected cost

Technical Feasibility

Hard ware and software with best option

$ 500

Operational Feasibility

Training with best option

$300

TOTAL

All feasibility cost

$800

Table4

Feasibility report

When the researchers studied the system how it is feasible technically, operationally, and economically. We recognized that the system is feasible with the cost of $1250. When the researchers made cost-benefit analysis they realized that the benefit would get in the future is greater than the incurred cost. So the researchers decided to begin making the new system that solves current system problems.

3.6 USER REQUIREMENT SPECIFICATION

Though university portal is working currently under the traditional paper based system, there is

Strong need to transform the manual procedures into computer based to manage portal operation easily and efficiently.

The system is a user friendly and it attracts the employee to use as attractive images that supports the employee to work comfortable and highly way of manner.

3.6.1 New Proposed System

The proposed system is computerized system and solves the problems of the current

system. The proposed system provides the following services.

The system works in production and controlling inventory in a virtual System

Production management, the managers can use this system to generate real time report according to the request of the manager.

The report is viewable by manager level and customer complaint.

3.6.2 Limitations

Researchers imagine that some of the respondents may not will to share with the researcher some of the information that they considered confidential but the researcher will promise to keep the information got as confidential and only to be used for academic purposes.

Untruthfulness is expected to be witnessed, where some of the respondents may not say the truth, but the researcher will probe the respondents additional to establish the truth when it deemed necessary.

On the other hand, every project has its own weaknesses, so In this project, the limitation of this university portal is only we talk Frontier University that is my study but there are more university in Somalia that is first limitation in our study, in second limitation of our study is data collection as we know there are many data collection such as interview, survey questionnaire and observation but we use interview that is the limitation.

3.6.3 System Requirement Specification

System requirement is a characteristic or feature that must be include in any information system to satisfy users.

3.6.3.1 System interface

The use of information systems in managing services increase operational speed. It creates interaction between portal staff themselves one side and customers and staff on the other side. The users believe that the system improve and manage operations as needed. Two computers are minimally required and the interface is a desktop based. The users must record daily transactions through the systems’ which is user friendly.

User Interface

The users of the GMS software will install the software. Install also SQL Server. The

System requires normal screen resolution.

3.6.3.2 Hardware interface

Server-side

Client-side

Intel Pentium 4, Dual Core 2.6

Intel Pentium III or above.

2GB RAM

512 MB RAM

500 GB hard disk

40 GB hard disk

Network Adaptor (NIC).

Network Adaptor (NIC).

3.6.3.3 Software interface

Server-side

Client-size

MS-SQL SERVER 2008

Asp.net

Microsoft Windows 9x/me/2000/XP/Vista/Win7

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or above

Firefox Mozilla

Google Chrome

3.7 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter, which focused on the first and the most important phase of the SDLC. During the requirement analysis, we made an investigation about the portal operations; we graphically presented the model of the current system using DFDs, we identified current system problems, we also tested the feasibility study and assured that the system is feasible. We suggested new proposed solution strategy by opting choice from the feasibility study. We concluded the model of the new proposed system by using the bottom-up approach list of events, converting events into processes and regrouping processes till the context diagram.

This project has finished the analysis phase of the SDLC, now what next is the design phase which will be covered on the next chapter.

CHAPTER FOUR

SYSTEM DESIGN

4.1 INTRODUCTION

In chapter three of this book we have conducted a detailed requirement analysis for the old system and requirements of the new proposed system which is a prerequisite for the design phase. So, in this chapter our main focus is the systems design which is one of the most important phases in the systems development life cycle (SDLC). Systems design is a broad term that encompasses data design, user interface design and report design. All these design types will be covered in this chapter in detail. Design requires extreme carefulness; because errors in the

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