CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

A grade point average, or GPA, is the system many schools use to rank student academic performance. Each grade a student earns is weighted according to a uniform scale so that a single number can be used to express grades earned over a semester, year, or even entire academic career. A GPA is usually regarded as a rough indication of a student’s abilities, and often serves as a way of ranking and distinguishing people for purposes of university admissions, scholarship awards, and job interviews. The number is not used in the educational systems of all countries, and not all countries or schools use the same scales.

Grading in education is the process of applying standardized measurements of varying levels of achievement in a course. Grades can be assigned in letters (for example, A, B, C, D, or F), as a range (for example 1 to 6), as a percentage of a total number correct, as a number out of a possible total (for example out of 20 or 100), or as descriptors (excellent, great, satisfactory, needs improvement). In some countries, all grades from all current classes are averaged to create a grade point average (GPA) for the marking period. The GPA is calculated by taking the number of grade points a student earned in a given period of time divided by the total number of credits taken. The GPA can be used by potential employers or educational institutions to assess and compare applicants. A Cumulative Grade Point Average is a calculation of the average of all of a student's grades for all courses completed so far.

The introduction of computer into information technology has massively improved the information need of organization; the success of this machine is dependent on the knowledge base. Therefore, one can be prompted to ask aloud “what is a computer”. Anigbogu (2000) defined a computer as an electronic device capable of accepting data and instructions, processing the data based on the instructions to generate results or output in such a manner that is yet to be equaled by any other known machine to mankind. For the fact that we are already into a new millennium, no organization, company or institution can do without information processing system or organizational information system. So many authors and researchers have in one way or the other taken step towards analyzing the problems associated with manual result processing and the need for computerized result processing.

Some previous work has actually been carried out in this area. Two of such are the work by Moses Ekpenyong and that by Ukem and Onoyom-Ita. In his work, Ekpenyong employs Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program to build an

Intelligent Knowledge-Based System (IKBS), making use of various programming facilities provided by that application (Excel). The central issue here is that the programming is hard coded into the cells, and cell referencing is used to monitor and track student’s performance (cumulative points, etc.). The system has been reported to be working fine. However, it appears to be rather restrictive, and calls for substantial expertise in programming. In the work by Ukem and Onoyom-Ita, Adobe Dreamweaver, an Integrated Development Environment, is used to create the Graphic User Interface and to write the codes. MYSQL Server, a Relational Database Management System, is used to create the database tables and data. Personal Home Page Pre-Processor (PHP) is used to communicate with and manipulate the database. This application, though tested and found to be working as expected, has however not been put to use widely. Apart from these two, there are undoubtedly several other similar applications in existence. There is, however, always room for improvement. This new application is intended to have reduced complexity and greater ease of use, in order to enhance maintainability while still retaining good speed and accuracy.