A Group Authoring Website Platform

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
 
Paper and pencil correspondence courses have been available for over fifty years, and for motivated students, have been proven to work adequately. However, today’s educators of college and university students face new challenges related to the increasing demand for provision of course related resources and documents due to the geometric surge in the population of students in tertiary institutions. Traditional blackboard and paper tutorship is proving to be an inadequate method of ensuring effective learning and assimilation amongst a multitude of students. Also there is a high demand for distance learning in today’s information age which cannot be met by traditional method.
Tertiary institutions in some of the developing and under- developed nations like Nigeria have not only experienced a tremendous increase in the number of students enrolled yearly but have also experienced the disruption of normal school session frequently by strikes. This vast number and the frequent disruption of normal school session have made it difficult for the few lecturers there are to lecture and assess students effectively. Hence there is need for an e-learning solution that enables lecturers to effectively teach and assess students irrespective of the permitted classroom time and the location of the students.
With the growth of information and communication technology, the advent of the world wide web and the introduction of e-learning technology, the development of a solution to extend the classroom to the internet and educate students on a one-on-one basis, is now possible . The web- based authoring and presentation system is such a solution and also incorporates a module for testing the student and hence assessing his performance. It also has an easy-to-use interface, hence ensuring that any lecturer can be an author of  a courseware with minimal computer expertise.
1.2       Objective of the study
The objective of this study is to develop a web-based Group Authoring Website Platform(GAWP).
1.3       Significance of the study
The study is very significant as it is tailored to meet the students’ needs in a specific area. Particularly, it will help the undergraduate students of computer science department to have a better understanding in the areas covered by the study. When students make good use of this platform, it will improve their performance . The following also buttress the importance of the study:

• With this interactive platform, the students will work at their own pace. In other words, the fast and the brilliant ones will learn faster while the slow ones will go according to their abilities.
• Due to the fact that the students are actively involved, many problems of indiscipline (distractions) are reduced to the greatest minimum.
• As learning progresses from simple to complex problems (i.e. from known to unknown), the students find it easier to follow than the lecturer- instruction method.
• In a given time period, more contents are covered than the traditional method.
• The immediate feedback of knowing the correct answers reinforces the students’ effort positively. More so, it avoids the fixation of wrong options.
• There is also the probability of remedial reinforcement i.e. a situation where student’s answer is wrong, he will have the opportunity to correct it himself or try it again.