Design and Implementation of a Mathematics Tutoring Application for Secondary School Students (A Case Study of God Saves Schools)

ABSTRACT

This research work deals with mathematics tutoring application for secondary school students. Chapter one is an introduction to the project to describe what the project entails. It discusses the problems in the existing system. Also described in chapter one are the aim, the objectives, the significance and the limitation of the study.

Chapter two is the literature review of the project which contain diverse research and scholarly articles written of this project while chapter three describes the method of data collection, system analysis and design and improvement on the proposed system.

Chapter four describes the implementation and result of the project and lastly, chapter five gives the summary, conclusion and recommendation.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE                                                                                                  i

CERTIFICATION                                                                                           ii

DEDICATION                                                                                       iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT                                                                               iv

ABSTRACT                                                                                                    v

TABLE OF CONTENTS                                                                                vi

LIST OF TABLES                                                                                           vii

LIST OF FIGURES                                                                                          viii

CHAPTER ONE:      INTRODUCTION

1.1          BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY                                                           1

1.2          STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS                                                                 2

1.3          AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY                                                   2

1.4          METHODOLOGY                                                                                     3

1.5          SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY                                                            3

1.6          SCOPE OF THE STUDY                                                                          3

1.7          LIMITATION OF THE STUDY                                                                4

1.8    DEFINITION OF TERMS                                                                     4

CHAPTER TWO:     LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0          INTRODUCTION                                                                                      5

2.1          COMPUTER ALGEBRA SYSTEMS                                                        6

2.2          COMMON MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARES                                         9

2.2.1       MAPEL                                                                                             9

2.2.2       MATHEMATICA                                                                                      9

2.3          MATHEMATICAL APPLICATIONS AND TEACHERS                              9

2.4          WHERE MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE STAND IN EDUCATION          10

2.5          TYPES OF TUTORING                                                                            11

2.5.1       PRIVATE TUTORS                                                                                   11

2.5.2       ACADEMIC COACHING                                                                         12

2.5.3       STUDENT-TO-STUDENT TUTORING                                                   13

2.5.4       ONLINE TUTORING                                                                       13

2.5.5       HOME TUTORING                                                                                   14

2.6          HISTORY OF GODSAVES SCHOOLS                                                    14

2.7          ORGANOGRAM OF GODSAVES SCHOOLS                                         15

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.0          INTRODUCTION                                                                                      16

3.1          ANALYSIS OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM                                                   16

3.2          OVERVIEW OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM                                           16

3.3          METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION                                                        17

3.4          SYSTEM DESIGN                                                                                     17

3.4.1       HIPO DIAGRAM (HIERARCHICAL INPUT OUTPUT PROCESSING)      17

3.4.2: FLOWCHART                                                                                      17

3.4.2       USED CASE DIAGRAM                                                       21

3.5          DATABASE STRUCTURE                                                   21

3.5.1       INPUT STRUCTURE                                                             21

3.5.2       OUTPUT STRUCTURE                                                         22

CHAPTER FOUR:                                                        SYSTEM TESTING AND IMPLEMENTATION

4.0          INTRODUCTION                                                                   23

4.1          CHOICE OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE AND DATABASE                23

4.2          SYSTEM REQUIREMENT                                                    23

4.2.1       SOFTWARE REQUIREMENT AND SPECIFICATION                               23

4.2.2       HARDWARE REQUIREMENT AND SPECIFICATION                              24

4.3          RESULT INTERFACE                                                           24

4.4          SYSTEM TESTING AND IMPLEMENTATION                                      26

4.5          DESCRIPTION OF FINDINGS                                              27

4.6          SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION AND MAINTENANCE                               28

4.6.1       HOW TO LOAD THE SOFTWARE                                      28

4.6.2       THE PLATFORM                                                                   28

4.6.3       HOW TO RUN THE SOFTWARE                                         28

CHAPTER FIVE:                                                          SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

5.1          SUMMARY                                                                                      29

5.2          CONCLUSION                                                                       29

5.3          REC0MMENDATION                                                            29

REFERENCES                                                                                      30

APPENDICES

 

 

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Dictionary                                                                                       22

Table 3.2: Formula                                                                                          22

Table 4.1: Start of Lesson Test                                                              26

Table 4.2: End of Lesson Test                                                               26

Table 4.3: .NET Compatibility                                                              27

 

 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.3: Organogram of God Saves School                                       15

Figure 3.1: Overview of the Homepage                                                  17

Figure 3.2: Tutorial/Lessons Page                                                          18

Figure 3.3: Assessment Page                                                                  19

Figure 3.4:  Dictionary                                                                           20

Figure 3.5: Used Case Diagram                                                             21

Figure 3.6: Input Structure for Formula                                                21

Figure 4.1: Quadratic Equation Lesson Interface                                   24

Figure 4.2: Formula Interface                                                                 25

Figure 4.3: Dictionary Interface                                                             25

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Tutoring application has only been available in recent times and few working in mathematics education today would be unaware of the growth in recent years of computer technologies for teaching, learning and research in mathematics. Calculating technology in mathematics has evolved from four function calculators to scientific calculators to graphing calculators and now to computers with computer algebra software. The use of mathematical library or mathematical software in schools is still rare and since it is difficult for teachers to go beyond the prescribed textbook, the school public library teachings may leave gaps and doubts.

As school activities expands, there have been a lot of task facing the teacher of a class. These tasks (Bertemes, 2016) include taking attendance of the students, teaching the students their class works, among others, hence the need for a tutoring application. A tutoring application that serves as a teaching assistant for the teacher is an application where books are kept, electronically in form of PDFs, Texts or Docs or any readable formats, where videos are stored, source of reference for related courses and mini-dictionary where technical words are stored for easy access and assess. It is a repository of knowledge, houses collections of books, videos and educational games (in form of quiz) and the likes.

Consequently, truth and knowledge can be found and acquired from the application through the aforementioned sources. The information contents (Jo, 2016) of any of collections can be recorded on microfilms, audiotapes, microchips and other materials traditionally kept in a library, which is charged with the responsibility of acquiring, organizing, maintaining, and judicial circulation of the books and other academic materials through the various sections of the application, for efficient use by the users.

 

1.2     STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS

The need for a mathematical tutoring application in God saves schools is because of the school operates a single non-computerized library system. Based on this, a number of problems face the existence and operation of the computerized mathematical library systems and the students being limited to their school textbooks alone for source of knowledge. Hence, the need for a separate mathematical library and making it, computerized, where the tutoring application can be easily integrated.

 

1.3     AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The aim of the system is to design a tutoring application for secondary schools using God saves schools as a case study.

In this study therefore, the researchers hope to accomplish the following objectives:

1. To solve the problem of limiting students to teachings of their teachers in the classroom.
2. To create a readily available mathematical dictionary where students can get meaning of mathematical terms

• To create a readily available module that contains a list of some mathematical formulas.

1. Provision of readily available tutorials in form of reading materials.
2. To design a system that will have a question and answer session at end of each topic to test the knowledge of the student.

 

1.4     METHODOLOGY

In this research work, Microsoft Visual C# and Microsoft Office Access are used as design methodologies. This is because of their basic advantage over other models or methods; which is their simplicity in nature.

 

1.5     SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study, tutoring application for secondary school students is designed to bring efficiency in the mathematical library system operations and to provide access to students in getting almost all they need for studies. It will eliminate some of the problems of students being limited to the teachings they get from teachers and textbooks, thereby widening their source of getting information for reading and tutoring materials.

 

1.6     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This project looks into the processes involved in keeping tracks of the readable materials. The software will be divided into modules containing selected mathematical topics (indices, surds, completing the square, factorization and quadratic formula), mathematical dictionary containing 300 mathematical terms, a list of mathematical 250 mathematical formulae, which are grouped into 3 different sections and an assessment after each lesson.

 

1.7     LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

This study will not look in detail of all topics done in secondary school. It will be limited to fiveselected mathematics topics, which include Indices, Surds, Factorization, Quadratic Formulae and Completing the Square, respectively.

 

1.8    DEFINITION OF TERMS

Design: It is a detail plan or arrangement to achieve a particular purpose.

System: It is an assemblage of interrelated elements, which we find interesting to study. It could be a process, a machine or a program.

Program:A set of instructions and procedures tells the computer what to do.

Application: A program designed to perform particular tasks.

Tutoring: Is an act or the process of giving instruction or teaching.

User: The user here refers to the people who make use of the application.

Automation/Computerization: It is a process of making a system to carry out its processes on its own without much helps from man.

Module: An independent unit that is part of a larger development. It is the same thing as sub-tasks.