Online Application System - Its Weaknesses and their possible Solutions

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Computer Science - Miscellaneous, grade: B, Kampala International University (faculty of computer studies), course: information technology, language: English, abstract: For many years students have been applying to colleges manually. The manual Application system has made the process difficult, leading to some of the students giving up and others applying late.
The ineffectiveness of the manual Application system pushed the researchers to conduct this study so as to identify the weaknesses of manual students' Application system, identify possible solutions to the identified weaknesses. The study was carried out in Tanzania, and data was collected from four regions of Tanzania namely Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Dodoma and Iringa. During data collection, several college students, secondary school students, registrars and parents were interviewed. It was found out that, the manual system wastes a lot of time especially when students are many. Other weaknesses included; lack of consistence, difficult in data retrieval among others. And an online Application system was seen as the only solution to the perceived problem.
PHP and MySQL were used to develop an online Application system. The system can be accessed via the web by simply typing the address of the system server in the web browser.
The major limitation of the study is that most villages have no access to the internet besides most people not being computer literate. Therefore the researcher recommends that computer lessons be made compulsory right from primary level by the government and those who cannot get access to the internet can go ahead and make use of the manual system.