Chapter I

THE PROBLEM AND REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Introduction
The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) brought a lot changed in the
world.This is the same reason why humans are now living in the so called digital world.
Students go the internet shops rather than staying inside a library to do their research.
Businessmen have already tapped the power of the World Wide Web (WWW) to
increase their sales and be available 24/7 to their clientele. Because of these trend in
the field of ICT, even schools or universities in the country both in rural and urban
places, not to mention around the globe, have taken the first step to be a part of the
digital community through the creation of their web portals. Web portals have risen in
popularity as a way of collecting, organizing and presenting content in a highly uniform,
customize and personalized way.
Student Portals are commonly used in colleges and universities where prompt
information and necessary updates must be readily available to a large number of
students. Departments of education sometimes also use portals to direct students to
educational resources for fun and learning. A student portal is an online gateway where
students can log into a school website to access important program information. It
contains information on courses offered, transcripts, email programs, exam schedules,
school announcements, activities and department contact numbers. They may also offer
links to useful Web resources, such as research tools and online journals.
Using an online portal instead of printing information in booklets saves schools printing
and paper costs. It also benefits the environment by using fewer resources. An online
portal makes it easier for students to access important information from anywhere at
any time of day.
The Sta. Cecilia College is a premiere school located at Gen. T. De Leon,
Valenzuela City. Sta. Cecilia College education and training is recognized and
accredited by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and Technical Education
Skills Development Authority (TESDA) has produced more than its share of leaders in
its respective industry. Exposing excellence in learning, it has a broad academic
program covering College of Information Technology, College of Business
Administration, College of Hotel and Restaurant Management and College of Education
courses.






















Review of Related Literature and Studies

According to Heng (2009), he discussed the essential step-by-step guide in making
a website. First, get a domain name. Second, choose a web host and sign up for an
account. Third, design the web pages. Fourth, test your website. Fifth, collect credit card
information in making money. And sixth, get the website noticed.
According to Wikipedia.org that was last updated on February 15, 2010, 3:42 pm,
a web portal, also known as a link page, presents information from diverse sources in a
unified way. Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer other
services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, databases and entertainment.
Portals provide a way for enterprises to provide a consistent look and feel with access
control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would
have been different entities altogether.
Lacey (2006) discussed the steps in registering a domain name. First, carefully
consider what would be the domain name for the website. Make sure that it is concise
and specific. If possible, construct a list of alternative domain names, in order of
preference. This is because with the huge number of websites in the Internet, some of
your ideas for the ideal domain name might have already been taken already so the
more names you can think of, the better. Second step, obtain the IP address or domain
nameserver from your hosting company. A nameserver is a special type of domain that
is used to identify a particular server. After registration, this information is needed in
order to set up the domain for use. Third, prepare for payment.


The usual method of payment with domain registrars is via a credit card. And fourth,
apply for the domain name. The web hosting company can do this, or one of numerous
accredited domain registrars.
Nickles (2007) describes using Work Action Analysis (WAA) as a method for
identifying requirements for a web-based portal that supports a professional
development program. WAA is a cognitive systems engineering method for modeling
multi-agent systems to support design and evaluation. This model is used to identify
many system elements that are acted on by the different roles in the system and should
be supported by a portal. While the current portal used by the center supports some of
these functions, to support all of them, it must be modified or replaced. This technique
for developing web portal requirements can be used by other professional development
programs.
The WAA model represents a learning service system on three dimensions:
means-end decomposition, parts-whole decomposition, and roles of cognitive agents.
WAA also provides methods for developing and using this model in planning and
formative evaluation. The WAA method for planning evaluation explicitly represents the
evaluators mental model of a learning service system and examines its alignment to
guide its design. The WAA method for formative evaluation then takes the WAA model
and interprets evaluation measures in the context of the model. As a demonstration, the
methods for planning and formative evaluation are applied to a portion of an
undergraduate engineering course.


To provide measures for formative evaluation of a course, a centralized
evaluation component that collects performance, perception, and process measures
was added to an Internet-based course management system. The WAA methods
provide insights to the design and operation of this learning service system, including
recommendations that could be implemented during instruction.
In the book produced by Sun Microsystems, Inc. (2004), the portal server product
life cycle were discussed. The cycle starts with the planning; developing; designing,
building and testing; deploying; and production.
In the planning phase, organization and the Sun ONE representative work to
understand the business and its needs, establish business objectives, and scope and
collect requirements. In the developing phase, the organization develops an overall
portal design based on the requirements the organization have established and
deployment estimates. The organization can begin designing, building, and testing the
portal once the organization have arrived at an overall architecture. In the deploying to
the last phase, the organization installs a server instance as a trial and test whether the
portal can handle the user load. If the portal is not adequate as it is, the organization
then adjusts the design and test the trial again. Adjust the trial design until the
organization has a robust portal that can confidently introduce to the organization.
Finally, once the organization have put the portal through a trial run and tuned the
portal, the organization need to develop and execute a plan for taking the portal from
trial to production.


According to Michalsky (2004), he stated that creating anything completely from
scratch is always a difficult proposition. You can't benefit from something that's been
created before.
There's no "platform" on which to build. There's nothing available to use as a model
or blueprint also. So it is when creating e-business web applications. The first time a
company constructs the type of application that's meant to run solely across the
Internet, it may draw on experiences gathered on a different network platform, but the
business ramifications of always being live and not being able to predict the volume of
user traffic make this a new situation.

Foreign Studies
In the study of Fuangvut (2005), he stated that a campus portal is an exciting
recent phenomenon forming part of the new generation of online services for all
stakeholders in institutions of higher education. He added that the general notion of a
portal should be to be distinguished from that of other web-based application and the
traditional intranet of the institution.
Fuangvut indicates the two major distinguishing characteristics of a campus
portal, they are as follows: (1) personalization, by which end-users are only able to
access information and online services pertinent to their activities, and (2)
customization, by which end-users are able to select their preferred information
channels and optional online services.


Barlett (2006), in his study used a layered approach incorporating four
progressively-informing steps. First, an initial exploration was performed using informal,
free-form interviews to examine what members of the Moggill Community Association
(MCA) perceived the needs of the community to be. Second, a design survey was
developed to test the usefulness of technology to communicate ideas garnered in the
interviews. This survey was a simple web-based interface to information previously
distributed by the MCA Executive. Third, a participatory design exercise was run to help
participants describe what they thought was needed to assist their communication and
collaboration tasks. Fourth, prompts from the participatory design exercise were used to
improve the design survey.
The results taken from the exercises and the usage statistics of the design
survey implied that sections of the community were interested not only in receiving the
information the site supplied, but also in creating new information for distribution.
This finding of Barlett provides tentative support for a theory that web
technologies positively affect community-expressed needs for better communication
and collaboration, and a basis for supporting the further investigation of the
phenomenon with larger samples.
Local Studies
According to Pestano (2005), he stated that website is intended to publicize the
client organization and its activities to its internal and external target audiences. The
website is also intended to facilitate PPI's internal and external information exchange,
and dissemination with its geographically separated target audiences.

The primary target audience of the project is the PPI members. The secondary
target audiences of the website are: (a) people in the field of journalism (ex. Non-
member journalists, journalism students, and researchers); (b) news subjects
(individuals and groups who are commonly featured in the news); and (c) entities
interested in funding PPI's future activities.
The Web site's features includes: (a) an archive; (b) on-line and downloadable
forms; (c) member account management; (d) a discussion board; and (e) member
directory.


Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework of the study is a set of coherent ideas or concepts
organized in a manner easy to communicate to others. To describe how the study flows,
the researchers have used the Input-Process-Output (IPO) model to show the string of
processes involved in the research.













INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT
Student and
Instructors
Information
Subjects
Description
Student Grades

Add, Edit, Delete,
Save, Search of
Grades and Subjects
to Database



College Portal
Statement of the Problem

In every study, problem statement exists. This research was conducted to.


Specifically, this study aims to answer the following questions:

1. What is the profile of the users of College Portal in terms of:

a. Gender
b. Age
c. Year Level
d. Course
2.