1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Evaluation is the systematic determination of merit, worth and significance of something or someone. Evaluation often is used to characterize and examine subjects of interest in a wide range of human enterprise including the Arts, business, Computer Science, criminal justice, foundation and non-profit organizations, government and other human services.

Performance Evaluation is a necessity for organizations, institutions and even individuals due to the fact that it helps them to know how they are faring and to know if there is any need for improvement. This research work is going focus on performance evaluation of students. In schools students are evaluated and their result is compared based on the Grading system adopted by a particular school. Some schools adopt the 4-point Grading system while others operate on the 5-point Grading system for evaluating student performance and computing their Grade Point Average (GPA). However, most schools use the conventional (manual) system for computing the GPA of students. There have been numerous problems associated with the conventional system of computation.

1. STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS

The following are the problems encountered with the use of conventional systems,

1. Manual computation of Grade point average
2. The work involved in the calculation of GPA is tedious especially when handling a large class.
3. A lot of time is exhausted and wasted in the process of computing while ensuring accuracy.
4. Most students cannot calculation their GPA.
   1. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objective of this study is to develop an automated student performance evaluation system that will be able to eliminate the problems associated with the conventional system for evaluating and computing grade point average (GPA) of students. The study seek to design a prototype system for evaluating student performance using Visual Basic programming language that will provide facilities that will,

1. Compute students GPA faster and accurately
2. Compute the GPA at various levels
3. Compute the cumulative GPA (CGPA)
4. State the class of Honours a student falls into
5. Enable students to be able to compute their GPA easily

1. SIGNIFICANCE OF THESTUDY

The importance of this study is to be able to evaluate student’s performance so as to save the student, school or Faculty officer from the stress of computing student performance manually which waste a lot of time during the process of  computing student result to determine their performance at the end of each semester or session

1. SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study centers on the computation of GPA for students of the Department of Computer Science in the Faculty of Physical Science in the University of Benin. This is due to time constrained and coupled with the fact that this research work is done alongside with academic work.

1. DEFINATION OF TERMS

Prototype:  It is the first or original model from which others are copied

Evaluation: It involves assessing the strengths and weakness of programs, polices, personnel products and organizations to improve their effectiveness

Student:  A person engaged in study, one who is devoted to learning; a learner, a pupil, a scholar, especially one who attends a school or who seeks knowledge from professional teacher or from books; as the students of an academy, a college or a university like a medical student, research student etc.

Grade point average:  The average obtained by dividing the total number of grade points earned by the total number of credits attempt

Performance: It is the act of performing; the carrying into execution or action, achievement, accomplishment, representation by action, as the performance of an undertaking of a duty

Grading: It is evaluation of performance by assigning a grade or score

1.7     LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

In carrying out this research, I was faced with some limiting constrains. Designing a system software that can provide all the numerous facilities as enlisted in the objectives of the study is quite a complex task especially with the fact that one is not quite efficient or skillful in the programming language of implementation and learning the language along side with the academic work, considering the short time allocated for the research work is not an easy task. This has limited the research work to the scope specified in the previous section above.

In addition, getting facts relevant to the study from the faculty of applied science, University of Benin, Benin City was quite difficult to come by. Personnel contacted were quite reluctant to giving out some vital facts required about the grading system of students in the faculty.