INTRODUCTION:

The progress of every educational institute is partially hinged on the diplomatic approach to address student complaints^1–4. Several students in tertiary institutes put forward many complaints to school authorities daily. These complaints must be documented and filed for easy access and future references using the appropriate complaint system^5,6. A complaint system is a sequence of actions used by many institutions to register students and clients’ complaints and provide adequate solutions later. Dealing with complaints usually involves listening actively, empathizing, taking responsibility, executing the responsibility, and following up.

However, conventionally most academic institutions in the developing economy handle students’ complaints manually. For example, Sunyani Technical University (STU) has over eleven thousand students with more than fifty (50) complaints from students in different levels and programmes each day. That is, the authorities receive these complaints manually, classified and file them manually. This approach becomes challenging as the number of complaints increases, making it difficult for students to lay a complaint and get their complaints resolved to their satisfaction. Also, the cost of printing these complaints by students and the time complexity make the process cumbersome. Additionally, school authorities face processing abilities as complaints increases. Moreover, the process is tedious, i.e., (i) students must visit the faculty office and complain against any issues during office hours. (ii) The complaint must be made by filling some form that includes regardless of the complaint’s type and category. (ii) After the complaint has been resolved, the student has to revisit the office to get the confirmation, making it time-consuming just for the student to get the result of their complaints.

However, the rapid development in technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet, cloud computing and web engineering ^7–22 has paved the way for using technological approaches to reduces the stress on both students and school authorities in dealing with complaints from students.

For example, a web-based complaints management system is anticipated to make the process easier to coordinate, monitor, track and resolve, and provide institutions with an effective tool to identify and target problem areas, monitor complaints handling performance and make business improvements. In addition, a web-based student complaint management system provides an efficient, timely, and equitable complaint handling that is easily accessible to students and staff in and outside the campus.

Hence, this paper seeks to design, develop and implement a web-based student complaints management system that will replace the manual complaint system in STU. We aim to create a user-friendly, robust, adequate, fast and secured complaint system for students and management using modern internet and web technologies (i.e., HTML, CSS, MySQL, and PHP).

The remaining sections of this paper are systematized as follows: Section 2 put forward a review of associated studies. Then, in section 3, we put forward the process and tools implemented in this project. Finally, we put forward the experimental outcomes and discussions in section 4 and the study conclusion in segment 5.

LITERATURE REVIEW:

This section reviews an overview of a web-based system, some programming languages useful for programming web applications and a summary of related works.

A Web-Based Student Complaints Management System:

A web-based student complaint management system is a stretch and site where students complain are laid and resolved. The student creates an account, log-in and lay a complaint. A desk officer from the management will attend and resolve the complaint and reply to the individual complaints posed. Several programming languages can be used to design a web-based student complaint management system, but we will discuss a few in this study in the following sections.

Programming Language (PL):

A programming language (PL) is a set of terminology and grammatical rules for commanding a computer or computing equipment to do specific tasks^23,24. Figure 1 depicts the various types and examples of programming languages. There are three types: assembly, machine, and high-level languages, which can be further subdivided into interpreted and compiled languages^24–26. Ruby, PHP, Python, Perl, and many other interpreted languages are examples^27,28. On the other hand, C#, C++, VB.Net, and Java are examples of compiled languages.

Figure 1: Classification of Programming Languages

Software Development Models:

There are various software development models^24,29. However, this study discusses two basic application development models, namely (i) the Waterfall model (conventional model) and (ii) Rapid Application Development (RAD) model, sometimes known as the prototyping approach.

Water Fall Model (WFM):

The work breakdown structure (WFM) was the first method for building information systems and is being used for medium to large complex system projects today. It is a somewhat formal approach to system development, dividing it into standard stages that must be completed in a specified order. The activities of each level must be met before the next phase can begin. In addition, the systems life cycle methodology maintains a fairly formal division of labour between end-users and information systems specialists³⁰.

Rapid Application Development (Prototyping) Model (RAD):

Prototyping is the process of swiftly and cheaply constructing an experimental system for end-user evaluation. Users may gain a better understanding of their information requirements by interacting with the prototype. To develop the final system, a template is created from the user’s preferred prototype. A prototype is a working model of an information system, though it is intended to be a basic model. Once operational, the prototype is fine-tuned until it adequately meets the needs of the users. Following the design, the prototype can be transformed into a polished production system³⁰.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

A web-based student complaints management system can be implemented using a variety of computer languages and technologies. Based on their excellence in this type of software design, PHP, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript were chosen for design and implementation in this study. For the backend, Xampp is used as a database management studio.

Requirement Engineering and Elicitation Techniques:

The process of obtaining and specifying what the system should provide is known as requirement engineering. It focuses on determining whether or not the system is helpful to the business (feasibility study), identifying requirements (elicitation and analysis), converting these requirements into any standard format (specifications), and ensuring that the requirements defined the system that the customer desired (validation). This study used models to understand the proposed system through interactions with business owners via interviews, personal observation, and various scenarios.

Software Development Methodology:

This study adopted the waterfall model based on its client’s centred approach and easy implementation. The development process constituted five (5) distinct phases; we outline the activities in brief.

System analysis:

We observed and inquired about the manual process via system requirements and data collection to determine which functions to include in the proposed system. Also, we considered the system design for the solution’s hardware and software technologies, technical specialists’ model and the correct design specifications in this step. Finally, the outcome is presented for approval by school management and users.

Production and maintenance:

Technical specialists examine the system’s technical performance and undertake maintenance. Figure 2 shows the flowchart of the proposed web-based complaint management system. Firstly, a user (student or staff) must register, and the system admin activates registration and assigns an appropriate access level. Activated users can then log in with their information. If successful, access is allowed to the user dashboard, where the student can select a preferred desk officer to pose a complaint. Secondly, the desk officer resolves the complaint and send it back to the student. Figure 3 shows the data flow of the proposed. It illustrates data transfer steps from the input to the file storage and reports production in a system.

Figure 4 shows the database schema diagram of the proposed web-based student complaint management system. During the first interaction, the system records the user’s personal information and access and the complainant’s information on the system’s database.

Figure 2: Proposed system data flow

Figure 3: Dataflow diagram of proposed system

Figure 3: The database schema

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS:

Four computers were used to test the final design. As a server, an Intel Core i5 with 8GB RAM and the Windows 10 server operating system was employed, and three desktop computers served as clients. We used a TP-Link 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Network Switch to connect the four machines using our custom created Local area networks (LAN). We present the outcome in the subsequent section.

User log-in module:

Figure 5 shows the log-in interface of the proposed system. It is the step module that pops up when the application is launched. First, the users are authenticated by providing their log-in details, i.e. username and password. Then, the user’s information is confirmed against the system after entering the user’s details, and if accurate, the user is directed to the main dashboard (see Fig. 6).

Figure 4: Proposed system login module

Figure 6: Proposed System Dashboard

Figure 7: Consultant module interface of the proposed system

Figure 8: Send complaints or message interface of the proposed

Figure 9: Proposed system unread complaints or message on desktop officer/consultant’s interface

Figure 10: Proposed system send complaints or message on desktop officer/consultant’s interface

Figure 11: Participant view on the developed system

Figure 6 shows the dashboard of the proposed system. The dashboard displays the user’s available consultants, submitted queries, unread messages, and the student’s ID number on a side panel labelled student.

Figure 7 shows the available consultant panel whom the students can lay all the complaints with the available consultants. To send a complaint, the user must first select the left panel’s available consultants. Firstly, a student clicks on the available consultant panel and then connect to the available consultants. When the preferred available consultants are selected and connected correctly, the student can enter the complaints and send them (See Figure 8).

Figure 9 shows the dashboard of the consultants or desktop-officer displaying unread messages of student complaints. The officer clicks on the read tab to see the complaint and reply through the reply module (See Figure 10).

System User-Friendliness Test:

We examined how easy it is to use the proposed system with four (4) students and two (2) staff. A purposeful sampling technique was adopted to sample these participants from the computer science department to validate the proposed system’s user-friendliness. Two students and one staff were coached on using the system, while the other three were not. This method enables the researchers to determine how user-friendly and straightforward the developed system is. After one hour of utilizing the system, each participant was given a Likert scale questionnaire to answer. The respondent was asked to evaluate the proposed system regarding quality, description, satisfaction, recommendation, requirement, and comment (see Figure 11). We observed that, on average, 80% of participants recommended that the proposed system be adopted and piloted within the University. However, they believe that orientation should be given to both students and staff before its implementation.

CONCLUSION:

Due to the numerous challenges, manual student complaint systems should be discouraged in this day and age of technological tools and platform advancement. However, many universities in developing countries like Ghana are still filing complaints the old-fashioned way. Besides, the progress in web technologies can offer a platform for implementing a student complaint management system that could significantly improve the day-to-day management of tertiary institutions.

In this study, a web-based students complaints system is proposed, designed and implemented using Sunyani Technical University as a case study. We aimed to create a low-cost and user-friendly web-based student complaint management system. The waterfall design model was adopted in the design. The proposed method was implemented using the WAMP server for the MySQL database, PHP server-side programming and HTML, CSS for the front end. Our trial setup with seven participants demonstrates that the proposed solution is simple to use and reliable. As a result, it offers a user-friendly design that allows even inexperienced users to master it quickly. We hope that the University will adopt the system to promote ease and flexibility in their complaints mechanism.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

We want to convey our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to God Almighty, the Omnipotent, and the Omniscient for his mercy, direction, and protection over our initiative. Furthermore, we are grateful to Sunyani Technical University in Ghana’s Bono area for providing us with information to design and develop the proposed system. We would also like to thank everyone who helped make our study a success, especially our tireless supervisor, for his unwavering support and sacrifices. Finally, we are incredibly grateful to all of our loved ones for their prayers, motivation, and support throughout the building of our student complaint management system.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST:

The authors have reported no conflicts of interest.

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Received on 08.10.2021 Accepted on 10.12.2021

Int. J. Tech. 2021; 11(2):35-43.

DOI: 10.52711/2231-3915.2021.00005