CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of study
Distance education emerged in response to the need of providing access to those who were not able to participate in face to face courses. It includes those programs that allow the learner and instructor to be physically apart during the learning process and maintain communication in a variety of ways. Keegan (2006). Technology has played a key role in changing the dynamics of each delivery option over the years as well as the pedagogy behind distance education, it enables learners and instructors to access education at any time and from any place. It has been found that technology is beginning to change the way lectures are delivered and how students learn.
Shanam (2008) noted that the introduction of an interactive system will offer unique opportunities for providing solutions to many of the increased needs of our educational system today. Chat systems are most suitable for communication because it enables immediate conversations freeing lecturers to focus and interact with students for a closer relationship, since there is an outgrowing need for electronic accessories which will provide great necessity speed, efficiency and perfection of work.
Now, the internet represents one of the most successful examples of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure. Information handling has gone beyond papers and is now at the direction of personal computer.
Thus, the main objective of this project is to develop a general purpose interactive information system for a more web-centric environment, although its primary focus is not on the website design but a platform where lecturers, students and any authorized person can get all the available information like lecture notes, assignments, and so on. It will also help in making the processing of information easier and feedback faster.
Basically, it has been observed over the years that number of students live far away from the educational institutions as well as some workers who find it necessary to obtain higher education degrees, for further employment to satisfy the competitive job markets. Instead of resigning or quitting their current jobs, they prefer distance learning and also in many institutions most students find it difficult to interact with their lecturer, which makes it hard for them to unleash their potentials. So the rising tide of not getting to know more about students and lecturers occurs due to lack of student-lecturer relationship whereby most times a lecturer after delivering his/her lecture leaves the hall without minding if the topic is been understood properly or not and the students who are not bold enough to approach the lecturer for more explanation tends to fail. Even in the aspect of submitting assignments on time too, the course representative may relay the submission date to his/her fellow students late and this may also lead to failure because most students might be unable to complete it before the deadline to this effect, a crucial need for the interactive system for courses to aid students submit assignments on time, interact with different course lecturers directly, participate in course forums, download course materials and many other academic activities is required.
Since many of today's young students can be referred to as "digital natives", a term coined by Prensky(2001) to describe individuals who have known nothing but a digital environment since birth, surrounded by and using all the necessities of the digital age. Mostly, these students prefer to seat at their comfort zones and learn, therefore interactive systems like this can be very useful.
The key goal of every lecturer is to engage the students and an unrelated student is unlikely to excel in a course but it can be difficult to hook every student manually, consequently, with an improved interactive environment this goal can be successful. The degree of inter activity and quality education will increase because students working from a computer have more time to ponder a question before responding than they would if there were in the lecture room and also those who are timid about speaking during lectures feel freer to express their opinions online.
