Background Review

Digital revolution has brought about major changes in the education sector. Currently, many institutions are managing their processes using digital information available for them. A marking and grading system play a vital role in any learning institution (Akella, Diaz and Babu, 2017). However, for many years now have not related outcomes, expectations, and performance. Students desire to attain good grades and marks in their exams, assignments, reports, and projects and this is such a difficult task for lecturers to make comprehensive, fair, and accurate evaluations especially when it involves many students. This is very necessary to ensure that there is no conflict of interest between the lecturers, students, and parents (Rice, 2012). As such there is need to have a computerized system/ software that will aid the lecturers in marking and grading student exams, reports, assignments, and project reports. This is because it is effective, produces more accurate results and is timely.

Additionally, such systems can be used to identify student weaknesses and offer incentives for achievements. The system will aid in assessing student strengths, weaknesses, performance, skills, and talents. Since the marks are very crucial information that will be used to determine if the student will advance to the next level or not, therefore, accuracy and completeness are very important (Paredes, 2017). Lecturers feel that the time and energy spent in manually marking their papers and entering the marks manually could be redirected in some other constructive activities such as meeting with students, preparing lessons, or researching on new concepts to teach students.

With the advancement in technology, it is now possible to computerize marking and grading activities and there is several software available in the market both web-based and stand-alone systems that will enable the lecturers to save on time and divert their time to other essential activities. However, most of the rural colleges especially in rural areas, they are still using the traditional system of marking and grading students manually. This proposal seeks to propose a marking and grading system so as to reduce the workload that the lecturers have to undergo in manual recording and computation for every student (Olasehinde, 2015). The common problems associated with the manual system include redundancy, errors, improper handling of file, and inaccuracy. Lecturers tend to get tired and exhausted as the number of students increases reducing their throughput and accuracy in marking and grading the exams.

XYZ college is a fast-growing college in the rural areas of Britain. The college was established five years ago and is still utilizing the manual system of marking and grading. The college still maintains a small ration of lecturers even with the growing number of students. The lecturers are handling several subjects in different classes and one lecturer can handle up to four subjects in different classes. XYZ College utilizes the manual means to mark, add information, and grade students. The process involves a lot of energy, time, and input from the lecturers to mark, compute, and grade students since they handle many students at a time. Lecturers are often prone to making mistakes because of the tedious work they are carry out.

Statement of the Problem

By developing a marking and grading software system for XYZ college, the lecturers will use less energy and time in marking and grading the students effectively and efficiently. This will not only improve the productivity of lecturers but will also benefit the students because increased accuracy in marking and grading their papers (Bohannon, 2017).

By grading the students accurately, the college will be able to gauge and judge the quality of students and their abilities. Therefore, this process should be carefully done because it plays an essential role in any education system in determining if the student will proceed to the next level as such it should be done accurately and comprehensively (Majewska, 2015). Evaluation and assessment are one way of determining the impact or influence that the student has received in doing a particular curse or subject and to determine the effectiveness of the education system and learning process.

For many years, colleges have been ranking students based on their performance and this has had negative influence on learning. This is because the society is increasingly becoming anxious in the efforts to see students get more marks in examinations which causes extremely stressful existence between the students, parents, and the society. Human error cannot be avoided regardless of efforts that has been made to enhance examination reliability (Kuppusamy, Kaniappan and Thirupathi, 2015). This limitation can be addressed by categorizing the students in groups based on range of scores. As such, this requires that there is a reliable and functional marking and grading system.

There is need to assess the students, not only in academic area but also in other areas of life such as sports and games, attitudes and values, and life skills (Hendra and Arifin, 2018). Comprehensive and continuous assessment scheme seeks to solve this problem in a holistic approach.

General problem

• How to develop a marking and grading software or XYZ college.

• How to develop a software that will aid lecturers in marking exams
• How to develop a software that will enable automated grading
• How to reduce errors that are currently committed due to manual system
• How to create a system that will automatically rank students based on their performance.
• How to develop a system that will generate students’ performance report.

General Objective

• The general objective that this study seeks to achieve is to develop a software that will enable computerized marking and grading for XYZ College.

Specific Objectives

• To develop a software that will aid lecturers in marking exams
• To develop a software that will enable automated grading
• To reduce errors that are currently committed due to manual system
• To create a system that will automatically rank students based on their performance.
• To develop a system that will generate students’ performance report.

Computers offer users an effective and faster way to record and process information. The number of students is rapidly increasing in all levels of educational institutions and there is increased demand for the teaching force. Marking and grading system are vital factors in achieving the objectives of a learning institution that helps in gauging the performance of students and what they have learnt in a particular grading period. Lecturers spend a lot of time in marking and computing the grades of the students accurately using calculators because the institution have not implemented a computerized system (Keng, 2017). One basic goal of a marking and grading software is to enable parents to receive summary of how their respective children are doing in school and the factors that influence the learning process of the student. The system supplies the education stakeholders with comprehensive report of the learning progress in a particular grading period for the selected learning areas. Therefore, the software will improve the way lecturers mark, record, and computer student grades.

Lecturers will be able to spend little time in marking, recording, and computing students’ grades reducing their workload and increasing the time that they can spend in other constructive activities such as meeting with students. Redundancy will be addressed because the school administrators will not need to recalculate students’ grades to check on accuracy (Jiraro, 2017). Also, reports will be generated on time and on-demand basis. Since the lecturers have more extra time, students will have more time to interact with lecturers.

The diagram below represents the various phases that the software development will undergo. So far, the project team have been able to gather the requirements needed to achieve the objectives of the study.

Conclusion

It is important for any learning institution to have a marking and grading system. The system will aid in assessing student strengths, weaknesses, performance, skills, and talents. Since the marks are very crucial information that will be used to determine if the student will advance to the next level or not, therefore, accuracy and completeness are very important. Because of the increased number of students, lecturers are handling several subjects in different classes and one lecturer can handle up to four subjects in different classes. XYZ College utilizes the manual means to mark, add information, and grade students which is very tedious, erroneous, and inefficient process. Accurate grading of students enables the institution to assess the quality of students and their abilities. Therefore, this process should be carefully done because it plays an essential role in any education system in determining if the student will proceed to the next level as such it should be done accurately and comprehensively. Some of the advantages of implementing such system include reduced human errors, less time in marking and grading students, timely reports, and increased efficiency.  

Reference List

Akella, S., Diaz, P. and Babu, B. (2017). Exam Results Fit to a Normal Distribution. DJ Journal of Engineering and Applied Mathematics, 4(1), pp.20-28.

Bohannon, J. (2017). A computerized early warning system for students in academic trouble. Science.

Erere, I. (2017). Automated Result Process System Processing System (A Case Study of University of Port Harcourt). TEXILA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH, 4(2), pp.89-94.

Hendra, M. and Arifin, Y. (2018). Web-based Usability Measurement for Student Grading Information System. Procedia Computer Science, 135, pp.238-247.

Jiraro, S. (2017). The grading system guidelines for Open University. New Trends and Issues Proceedings on Humanities and Social Sciences, 4(1), pp.132-138.

Keng, S. (2017). Tenure system and its impact on grading leniency, teaching effectiveness and student effort. Empirical Economics, 55(3), pp.1207-1227.

Kuppusamy, S., Kaniappan, V. and Thirupathi, D. (2015). Design and Development of Multi-Tenant Web Framework. Procedia Computer Science, 48, pp.180-191.

Majewska, K. (2015). Computer based examination system. e-mentor, 2015(1 (58), pp.41-47.

Olasehinde, M. (2015). Conducting Examinations in Nigerian Polytechnics: A Case Study of Kwara State Polytechnic. Higher Education Studies, 5(4).

Paredes, V. (2017). Grading System and Student Effort. Education Finance and Policy, 12(1), pp.107-128.

Rice, W. (2012). Blackboard essentials for teachers. Birmingham: Packt Pub.