A mobile based application for verification of legitimacy of degree certificates in Kenya
Date
2016
Authors
Ochieng, Harry Opiyo
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
Every company needs to hire competent and academically qualified staff in order to provide quality service delivery. Therefore companies rely on academic certificates for their prospective employees as a proof and measure of their academic qualifications. However, due to the high number of forged academic certificates in the job market, companies have always ended up hiring unqualified staff with forged academic certificates. This makes the companies to incur huge financial losses and experience low production outputs. Therefore, there is need for employers to verify academic certificates for their prospective employees in order to ascertain their legitimacy. However, these employers lack a uniform process and means for verifying the authenticity of academic certificates. The current systems for verification of academic certificates are time consuming, tiresome and expensive, making only few of the employers to verify certificates for their prospective employees.
This dissertation provides a detailed study of challenges faced in verification of academic certificates, techniques used in verification of academic certificates, how a mobile application for verification of academic certificates can be designed, developed and tested and if the mobile application solves the challenges faced using the current techniques for verification of academic certificates Data was collected by use of online questionnaires. The data collected was used to find out the challenges faced in verification of academic certificates and the current techniques used in verification of academic certificates. Data analysis was done using Google analysis tools and the results obtained were used to formulate the system requirements and for designing the web and mobile applications. Iterative Software Development was adopted as the software methodology for developing the applications.
A mobile and web applications were developed to make verification of academic certificates faster, easier and affordable. The final prototype was tested to check if the requirements are met. Testing was conducted by both the developer and potential users of the application. Other tests included user testing and compatibility testing.
Description
A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of a Master of Science Degree in Mobile Telecommunication and Innovation (MSc. MTI).
Keywords
Education, Mobile application, Forgery, Academic Certificates, Universities, Counterfeit, Legitimate