DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTEGRATED SOFTWARE FOR ACADEMIC PLANNING UNIT/ DEPARTMENT OF TERTIARY INSTITUTION

ABSTRACT
Academic planning as “a sub-system provides direction and approval for matter’. The formulation of a good academic planning is only the first implementation putting the academic program plan into action. This requires that goals and objective are developed. As part of the plan. The duties of the academic planning unit include; Firstly, to provide institutional planning for academic programs. Secondly, to provide a regular report to faculty council. In order to complete this project an investigation of the academic planning unit was carried out with the aim of identifying the predominant problems in the academic planning unit, this investigation revealed many discrepancies within the system. To improve the efficiency of the academic planning department, to use a good database management system to respond to yawning situations. This research was done successfully but with some natural limitation confronting this study. The researcher has been motivated to handle this topic due to his love and interests for education, having seen the poor management in academic section the researcher have come about ending it. The study adopted Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Methodology (OOADM). The programming language used in developing this system is the HTML, CSS and PHP. Finally the system was successfully developed, tested and implemented.

Background of the Study
Integration of documentation and knowledge based computerized service in information system is a tremendous means to help management in their daily practices and to improve its quality (Ahaiwe, 2007). Academic planning unit of any tertiary institution provides a range of management and planning support to facilitate informed decision-making, planning and policy formulation, and overall strategic development of the university (University of Ibadan, 2018). The role of the office is to provide timely and accurate information to the University for planning and managerial decision (Howell, 2013).
With the national dividing financial budgetary allocation, nature academic planning is essential for proper channeling of our limited resources provisions for lecture rooms and office spaces seen to have been neglected for the previous years. Academics have been in chaos; student admission has been on the increase without regard to available infrastructure.
With the national division of financial budgetary allocation, nature of academic planning is essential for proper channeling of our limited resources for provisions of lecture rooms, office spaces, staff recruitment and entitlements are seen to have been neglected for the previous years. Academics have been in chaos; students’ admission has been on increase with no corresponding infrastructure. According to Ahaiwe, (2007) available classroom spaces have insufficient desks, table and chairs. Partially due to over blown student population, examinations are difficult to conduct and examination script are not yet computerized only in first year and second years. Library facilities need to be coordinated, with all these, a good academic planning which would encompass short, median and long term planning is necessary in the institution. For this purpose, an academic planning unit is one word for proper articulation of academic activities. Hence, development of an integrated software for academic planning unit would fast track the actualization and realization of the vision and mission of tertiary education in terms of managerial proficiency, easy and simple record and retrieval information , efficient and effective teaching and learning and overall performance of the students.Vossen, (2017) rightly declared that the manual methods being employed suffer a number of setbacks; they make the process to be time consuming and prone to error.
Hence, the development of an integrated software for academic planning will enhance student performance and learning information using big data, helping instructional design processes and data collection, as well as cross checking; with best practices using artificial intelligence.

1.2 Statement of the Problem
It is observed that most of its records in academic planning unit are handled manually. The problems associated with the manual method include inefficiency, poor response times, poor planning and execution of major activities and low productivity.
1.3 Aim and Objective of the Study
The aim of this research is to develop an integrated software for academic planning unit/ department of tertiary institution.
The objectives of the new system are as follows; to develop a system that can
i. Improve the efficiency of the academic planning department
ii. Improve good database management system that can respond to yawning situations
iii. Employ the service of Information Technology Based systems that can improve on the academic planning operation.
iv. Provide a total computer based solution.