ORIENTAL JOURNAL OF ISSN: 0974-6471

COMPUTER SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY August 2016,

An International Open Free Access, Peer Reviewed Research Journal Vol. 9, No. (2):
Published By: Oriental Scientific Publishing Co., India. Pgs.66-72
www.computerscijournal.org

Development of Online Student Course

Registration System
Rattan Singh, Ravinder Singh*,
Harpreet Kaur and O. P. Gupta

Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India.

http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/ojcst/9.02.02

(Received: June 16, 2016; Accepted: July 20, 2016)

ABSTRACT

With the advent of Information Technology in the last decade, the major focus has shifted
from manual systems to computerized systems. Various systems viz. railway reservation, hospital
management etc. involving manual work have been automated efficiently. Student course registration
process in colleges involve filling registration forms manually, getting it signed by respective subject
teachers, and then getting the documents acknowledged fromthe concerned Advisors, College Deans
and Accounts Officers respectively. Finally the registration forms are submitted in the Administrative
Branch. As is evident, this process is very laborious and time consuming. An Online Student Course
Registration System has been developed to simplify the current manual procedure.This system has
been developed using PHP, jQuery, Apache and MySQL. The front-end is designed using PHP with
excerpts of code written using jQuery and back-end is designed and managed through MySQL. This
system software is more secured, user-friendly and less time-consuming.

Keywords: PHP, MySQL, jQuery, Apache, Database, Database Management System,

Front-end, Back-end.

INTRODUCTION modules, which further contain different systems

along with the implementation of their defined
System may be defined as a layered constraints.
structure that depicts how programs involved would
interrelate and communicate. In computers, System Basically, systems are implemented for
may also include actual programs, programming facilitating complex manual processes and that
interfaces and tools for managing the larger system. is exactly what we are trying to achieve. System
The term system may be used differently in different is implemented as per user requirement such as
contexts, but more or less the concept remains the a manufacturing concern may install a plant for
same. Online student course registration system easing out manual processes. We have sought
combines multiple systems to construct a combined help from computer programming for automation
framework. This framework consists of multiple of manual registration system. With the introduction
67 Singh et al., Orient. J. Comp. Sci. & Technol., Vol. 9(2), 66-72 (2016)

of computers, every aspect of our lives has been From students’ point of view, they have to fill the
revolutionized. When used judiciously, computers forms manually and then get them verified from
can help us save time, secure our personal concerned officials, which is a very time consuming
information, access the required information process. The objectives of this proposed web
whenever and wherever required. Keeping all application system are:
these positive points in mind, we have developed
an Online Student Course Registration System for • To computerize student and faculty database.
easily managing the semester registration process • To maintain data consistency and integrity.
for the student in an institution. Ours is an advisory • Automate the registration process without any
based system. In state agricultural universities physical human interaction
the course allocation is advisory based and more • Making the registration process accessible
complicated. The courses are assigned according anywhere to the student.
to the skill set and industry requirements. Hence, • Allowing faculty to acknowledge registration
in current scenario, automated system is required requests from anywhere.
for course registration of students.
With the requirement of registration
Objectives process for every semester, it becomes all the
The current research aims at reducing the more important to simplify a process which is highly
workload all the entitiesinvolved in the registration repetitive. The achievement of the above objectives
procedure for the students. The current manual can help the institution in managing the resources
system faces different challenges as to maintaining efficiently. The automated process will lead to time
data of each student manually. Hard copy registers saving and eradication of common errors.
are maintained currently to verify student details.

Fig. 1: System Flow of Student Registration

 Singh et al., Orient. J. Comp. Sci. & Technol., Vol. 9(2), 66-72 (2016) 68

MATERIAL AND METHODS Admin Module

The administrative module is managed
Present System by the administrator. It is responsible for creating,
The existing system involves the student managing, authenticating and authorizing different
filling five identical forms called yellow forms which users and user types. Currently we have six user
contain student’spersonal details as well as the types i.e. Student, Head of Department, Registrar,
courses he/she has to register during the next Accounts Officer, Dean and Faculty. Under the
semester. After filling those forms, the student gets Admin module the administrator can create and
them signed by the respective subject teachers and delete users and user types.
the Advisor assigned. Then the student submits the
semester fees and obtains the fee receipt and gets Masters Module
the signature of the Accounts Officer by obtaining Masters Module manages database
the fee receipt. After this process, Dean Nominees entries of all the master tables from the front-end.
acknowledges and confirms all the signatures and The Masters database is more or less permanent
receipts and finally the forms are submitted in the and is modified only at session start. The Masters
administrative block. The student also receives one Module currently manages these databasetables
of the copies of the Yellow Form. As is evident, the namely: category, college, country, course,
student and faculty are hassled whilst completing course-category, credit/non-credit, department,
the registration formalities and moreover, it leads designation, faculty, gender, qualification, quota,
to an added discomfort. student, stream, Ug/Pg.

Proposed System Transactions Module

The web application system consists Transactions Module facilitates the entries
of five modules in total, namely Admin, Masters, for Programme of Work and Student Registration
Transactions, Reports and Utilities: from the front-end of the web application. Programme

Fig. 2: Final Output after completing Registration Process

69 Singh et al., Orient. J. Comp. Sci. & Technol., Vol. 9(2), 66-72 (2016)

of Work is created when a student is first enrolled and resources. Although implementation phase
with the college and Registration is done at the might require hardware additions but currently
beginning of every semester. Programme of Work the project is technically feasible and should
contains details of all the courses to be studied proceed further. The operational feasibility analysis
by the student during his/her degree. Registration acknowledged the acceptability of the provided
caters to the courses a student has to study during solution to the problem. This analysis verified that
the current semester. The List of Registration the new system will be acceptable and adaptable
courses is obtained from the Programme of Work to the new users. The economic feasibility study
database. perceived that the project will produce long term
gains for the institution. The cost benefit analysis
Reports Module proved that benefits of the proposed system
Reports Module comprises of the final undermine the costs involved, hence the system
view of the entries made into the Admin, Masters is worth implementing. The utility it provides to the
and Transactions Modules. The information depicted students for completing the registration process
inside the Reports Module is not visible to everyone and the provision it provides to the faculty for
in order to maintain data security, data integrity and managing the database makes this project feasible
consistency. The information is available according to undertake.
to the type of user logged into the system. This
module contains reports for all the Admin, Masters Design
and Transaction modules. While designing the web application portal
a three tier architecture for application development
Utilities was followed. The presentation tier occupies the
Utilities menu contains two entries namely: front end design of the application. It relates to every
Backup and Documentation. Backup offers options entity with which the user interacts. It accepts user
to Back up the database tables in sql format and can inputs and actions, and then sends this information
be saved in the root directory. As per need, the user to the data tier through the application tier for further
can take back up of some or all tables at any time. processing. The student course registration portal
Documentation contains the project documentation accepts input in the form of student’s personal
prepared which contains the detailed project system detail, student’s registration details, faculty details
requirements, analysis and future scope of the etc. The second tier is application tier, it serves as
system. an intermediary to the presentation tier and the data
tier. It applies business logic to the input received
System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) from the presentation tier. The business logic is
Analysis applied combining the information collected from
A detailed analysis report was prepared upper and lower layers of the three tier architecture.
before designing the project. Initially the registration When a student or a faculty member asks for a
system was manual and every step in this system report to be retrieved, on the basis of this command
was performed manually which wasted time of all data is fetched from the database and the required
concerned. business logic is applied and finally a report is
displayed to the user. The third and final tier is the
Feasibility Analysis data tier which is concerned with the design of the
An online registration system was database to be used with the web application. It is
developed where a student can register himself. concerned with maintaining central servers and its
The registration form has been designed to be information. The data tier is kept independent of
user friendly and easy to fill and hence leads to application servers and business logic to promote
saving of time and money as compared to multiple data security. The database is developed using
forms filled manually by the students. The software MySQL keeping in mind the authenticity concerns of
development team ascertained the technical different users. All the necessary primary keys and
feasibility of the project and concluded that the access controls are depicted with utmost care.
project can be undertaken with available technology In recent times, there has been an increase
 Singh et al., Orient. J. Comp. Sci. & Technol., Vol. 9(2), 66-72 (2016) 70

in use of Web enabled transaction processing online. application was found to be working conveniently.
Many organizations have adopted this technique for However, latest versions of the browser, Operating
processing payments and selling products online, System and hardware components of the computer
making travel reservations etc. Online Student are recommended for best results.
Course Registration System is based on the Web
enabled transaction processing model. The design RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
flow of the web application starts with the student
logging into the system and selecting the courses Development of Student registration
one wants to opt. Then the system verifies the system has greatly simplified previously complex
data again with the database and sends it to the tasks. Manual work is reduced to a large extent.
concerned advisors, dean and/or faculty. After The task of maintaining huge data can now be
the process is completed, a notification is sent to accomplished with a few button clicks. Previously,
Advisor, Dean, Registrar and Student. There are the system was hectic for both faculty and the
in total 23 tables in the database for managing students but now that it is accessible anywhere,
student data namely Category, Cnc, College, registration process has been simplified. The
Country, Course, Crs_category, Department, database is maintained on a central server, so that
Designation, Faculty, Gender, Pow, Qualification, it can be accessed anywhere inside the university
Quota, Registration, Stream, Student, Stu_reg_ by authorized personnel. Different departments
detail, Temp_course, Temp_reg, UG/PG, User, can access the data whenever required. Also, the
Usertypes and Validations. These tables further process being simple and easy to use any student
contain multiple columns for storing information. or faculty with minimum computer knowledge can
The database has been normalized which helps to use the application easily. The user can print the
maintain data integrity and prevents duplication of final registration card and keep the information
data. Initially before pursuing the project a system safe with him/her. Also, this detail can be saved as
flow was prepared in order to answer the following a PDF file anywhere on the computer.
questions:
Fur ther, In future we would like to
• How will data flow In and Out of the system? recommend certain valuable additions to the
• How to maintain relationship between different project. The most important is allowing students to
data? submit the fees online. This can be achieved using
• what will be the different milestones data will the services of an online payment system portal.
travel from start to end? This addition would further reduce the student
requiring, visiting the college premises physically. It
To understand these questions and would completely automate the given system. Also,
assess the requirements, pictorial representation a system to digitally sign the documents can also
was prepared which is given below in Figure 1: be implemented in future. This would enable the
The front-end design of the web application is faculty and registrar to acknowledge the documents
designed carefully for usage simplicity. There is more securely and reduce the security risk to
a menu bar at top of the page for navigation and valuable personal information. Entering student
the user can scroll through different pages with its grades at semester end is also recommended to be
help. The final product of the registration system implemented in the future. Finally we can say that
describes the student registration information in the the Online Student Course Registration System for
format of the Yellow Form and is depicted below in Student is ready for implementation and will surely
Figure 2: provide the students and every entity associated
with it a better experience. Although the project
Testing is complete and ready for implementation there
The compiled project was tested is always room for improvement. As this system
thoroughly using different usage environments like depends upon computer hardware, and with more
different browsers, Operating Systems, hardware and more student entries into the database there
components and different sets of data. The web will be constant need to update server storage.
71 Singh et al., Orient. J. Comp. Sci. & Technol., Vol. 9(2), 66-72 (2016)

To make the system more secure, In future digital able to create a web application environment that
acknowledgement signatures and SSL encryption is efficient and consistent enough.
can be implemented.
The primary objective of our research
CONCLUSION and development was to automate student course
registration procedure. It has been achieved
Implementing the Online Student Course successfully and the system is tested to be working
Registration System, the registration procedure efficiently. The student enters his/her information
has been simplified. Previously student had to during the beginning of the semester, the system
go door to door in order to get the documents verifies the data entered, compares it to the previous
acknowledged from the concerned officials whereas semester entries in the database and forwards it to
the currently developed system offers an efficient the concerned faculty. After getting the nod from
way to perform these operations. The students can the faculty and respective officials the registration
access the registration portal online either from a form is submitted to the administrative staff of the
computer or a smart phone, and fill the necessary college or university for further necessary action at
information and submit it for further approval. This their end.
web application provides us with ease of access,
user friendliness and transparency. On the other Online application of the whole system
hand, from organizations viewpoint, it helps in helps easy access to the system anywhere. Physical
maintaining transparency, data consistency, data presence of the student is not required. The time
accessibility and easy maintenance. taken for process completion is now largely reduced.
After registration the database is automatically
Implementation of the proposed system updated at the end of process completion removing
will reduce the workload of all those involved the hassle for department officials who had to enter
as the data can be now managed with proper the data manually. As the database is managed
authentication and authorizations instead of through MySQL, data duplication is eliminated
being hard copied and accessible to everyone. and thereby reducing chances of error. Also data
This system will largely save the precious time of can be now be easily retrieved, edited and printed
Deans, Advisors and Accounts Officers, Instead whenever required. Authentication based access
of explicitly signing every document; they just have proves to be more secure than manual system.
to acknowledge entries online with the click of a The data is maintained on a central server and
mouse. All the technologies i.e. PHP, Apache and is distributed among different departments as
MySQL used for current system design are open per requirement and copies of this database are
source and hence freely available for download. maintained on backup servers. Also, database
PHP provides a strong platform for creating the access is authorized and cannot be viewed or edited
visual front-end of the web application and PHP by unauthorized personnel. So, this automated
combined with HTML provides a very flexible and computerized system is safe, fast and user
development environment. For the purpose of friendly.
fulfilling Web Server requirements XAMPP was
used, which is again Open Source and is supported Acknowledgement
across multiple platforms. In order to maintain
visual consistency jQuery was used for simpler The authors are indebted to the advisory
implementation of certain features. For constant members for their continuous guidance and
testing, analysis and execution needs, Firefox and monitoring and for providing the opportunity to work
Google Chrome web-browsers were used. With on a live project inside the university data centre.
a combination of all these technologies we were
72 Singh et al., Orient. J. Comp. Sci. & Technol., Vol. 9(2), 66-72 (2016)

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