Chapter 1

Introduction

Technology has been a big part of our lives. People have been doing

intensive research on how they will provide an easier way to cope-up with

their task. Technology is growing at a rapid rate and constantly being

developed, altered, improved upon and has changed society throughout

history. Over the few decades, cellular devices, iPads, iPods, computers, and

most importantly the internet have completely overhauled the way people

interact in society and the way educators work in schools. Technology

practically runs our lives, with apps for everything imaginable, even some

accessible to young children. Each and every member of society, regardless

of the age is now connected to the world around us because of technology

(Reece, 2015).

Technology implementation in schools is pivotal to student due to the

changing times and high demands for tech savvy personnel. It is imperative

that teachers of the 21st century adjust to the technological revolution and not

only prepare themselves but prepare their students for the technological real

world. Technology has changed the way society looks, and the way the

classroom looks and there will be no return to chalk boards and writing letters.

The 21st century society demands a technologically advanced person and the

21st century classroom requires the same (Sutton, 2013). Due to the

advancement of computers, space exploration took place, vehicles were

designed differently, the entertainment world became more entertaining, and

medical science made more cures for diseases. Because of using computer,

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development of science and technology has direct effect on our daily life as

well as in our social life. Computers are used in various fields as well as in

teaching and learning (Anti, 2007).

The computers impacted society in many ways. Life became

instantaneously easier. Some people say that computers are taking away

manpower, and that may be true, but computers did make the impossible

possible. It is impossible to explore how each new advanced technology has

impacted our lives and how it will impact the future. Technology impacts the

environment, people and the society as a whole. Humans use technology to

travel, to communicate, to learn, to do business and to live in comfort. With

this evolving technology, getting information becomes easier, reliable and

efficient (Ramey, 2012).

Moreover, online based system has been a great part in the evolution

of information technology. An online based system is any electronic system

that delivers information to users via telephone lines to a computer or via

cables to terminals. It is managed by a host or gateways which a system that

maintains a base of information accessible to satellite users. With this online

system, it provides information usually in text form, about news,

entertainment, business, engineering, medicine, education and more. Some

online system allows users to download or copy large volumes of information

onto a local memory storage device. Furthermore, there are lots of online

based system used in offices that would make our work more accessible,

more efficient and less expensive.

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 In relation, the proponent’s system is expected to be a web-based

system wherein it is used to store and retrieve data or information, applying

QR Code algorithm in the said agency using internet. With this system, this

would help the employees of the Civil Service Commission Office to lessen

paper works, to have assessment of performance of Regional and Field Office

of the Commission to evaluate and the determine the areas that needs to be

change, and to have convenient transaction between the participants of the

training and the administrator and facilitator of the training or seminar.

According to Rose Chart (2006), the present invention enables the

creation of web sites for merchants with a built-in web-based reservation

booking system. This offers customers the on-line benefits of access,

selection and immediacy in making real-time reservation or appointments over

the internet. The software product also simplifies the merchant's booking

process by providing a central web-based reservation or appointment

management system that can be used for all bookings, regardless if made by

telephone, by a walk-in customer, or by a customer via the internet. In

relation, the booking process or the reservation process of the proponent’s

study simplifies for reserving a seminar or training for the participants that can

be used to result to no more walk-in customer or applicants and time

consuming and effort of the participants.

Another literature is a method and system for an online res ervation

system providing services of multiple categories of service providers. A user

may enter the online reservation system by clicking on a button either

embedded in a directory services search result for a particular service

provider or located on a particular service provider ‘s website. Alternatively, a

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user may search for service providers through the online reservation system

by entering criteria such as category of service, pricing, rating, location, or

time and day of availability of the service. Both users and service providers

receive electronic confirmation and reminders for the booked appointments.

Service providers may integrate all of their appointments with a calendar

maintained by the online reservation system. The system automatically

collects client data and may provide accounting services (Loeffen & Libersy,

2008). In connection to the study, this system is similar to the system that the

proponents will create wherein all the government employees in the region

including individuals are qualified to attend the trainings offered by the

agency. Through using internet, customer or applicant have the benefits to

access online which help people can reserve easily and faster. No walk-in

customer or applicant that can consume time and effort for them.

According to Shinozaki (2003), an online reservation system is

provided for managing an online-reservation offered from a terminal

communicably connected through a communication network. In the system,

information about a reservation for an event taken place in a facility is

received from the terminal via the communication network. The reservation is

made by a user. Also, positional information comes from the terminal via the

communication network to manage a current position of a user who made the

reservation. Both the received reservation information and the received

current position the user are managed. In cases where the user moves out of

a predetermined area enclosing the facility, the reservation is automatically

cancelled. Therefore, to provide an online-reservation system and method

that enables facilities such as a theater to cape with persons who made a

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reservation but does not come to the facilities to buy tickets when an event or

performance is carried out. In order to achieve the above object, there are

provided a facility-reserving management server, a method of managing an

online-reservation for a facility, and a program installed in a computer system

for an online-reservation. Accordingly, if a user who made a reservation for a

ticket at an event in a facility goes out of the predetermined area enclosing the

facility, such as an amusement park, the reservation will be cancelled

automatically.

A seminar may be defined as gathering data of people for discussing a

stated topic. Such gatherings are usually interactive sessions where the

participants engage in discussions about the delineated topic (Alestre, 2016).

The purpose of this is usually to inspire the government employee to become

better civil servant of the country, or to work towards implementing the skills

they might have learned from the seminar. Attending a seminar has numerous

benefits, including improving communication skills, gaining expert knowledge,

networking with others and renewing motivation and confidence. It is

important to attend a training or seminar to address weaknesses of each

individual especially in the office. Most employees will have some

weaknesses in their workplace skills. A training program allows you to

strengthen those skills that each employee needs to improve. A development

program brings all employees to a higher level so they all have similar skills

and knowledge.

Individuals entering or applying for promotional in government service

have to meet civil service eligibility, educational attainment, experience and

training requirements. To meet training requirements, the Civil Service

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Commission (CSC) is offering year-round learning and development programs

through its training arm, the Civil Service institute (CSI).

While there are many available trainings outside the CSC, the

Commission cited that one of the benefits of attending CSC’s training

programs is that participants are given substantial knowledge and learning

from actual stories in the public service as they are joined by other civil

servants, managers, and human resource experts during the training

sessions.

All these online reservation systems were made for the purpose of

removing manual process that people manipulate and do thing that beneficial

to them that is why reservation system gives an idea to the proponents to

create a convenience environment and to have a better way for serving

government employee or other individual that qualifies the standard of civil

service.

As the conduct of training, Civil Service faces problems in terms of

reservation and attendance of the participants or trainee. During the conduct

of interview, one of the employees in human resource said that reservation of

participants is difficult to manage in terms of cancellation of reservation,

double entry of participants, and dissemination of information about the

training. Likewise, during their attendance, some participants are not honest.

Some of these problems occur due to the manual process of reservation.

The proponents proposed a system not only to prevent but also to

improve the process of reservation and attendance in the agency. QR code

(abbreviated from Quick Response Code) is the trademark for a type of matrix

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barcode (or two-dimensional bar code) first designed for the automotive

industry in Japan. Bar codes are optical machine-readable labels attached to

items that record information related to the item. It was initially patented;

however, its patent holder has chosen not to exercise those rights. Recently,

the QR Code system has become popular outside the automotive industry

due to its fast readability and greater storage capacity compared to standard

UPC barcodes (Hoy, 2011). The code consists of black modules (square dots)

arranged in a square grid on a white background. The information encoded

may be made up of four standardized types ("modes") of data (numeric,

alphanumeric, byte / binary, Kanji) or, through supported extensions, virtually

any type of data (Masalha & Hirzallah, 2014).

Applying QR code for learning and development management system

will help facilitator and participants to a more convenient environment for

reservation of training and attendance. This way the system will save not only

time but also efforts that were supposed to prepare the events for training or

seminar. It will also speed up the process of taking attendance and

reservation of participants. The system also takes care of preventing

unauthorized attendance registration using multi-factor authentication.

The proponents will conduct a survey on every participant before and

alter the implementation of the system. The results of conducting a survey are

to have a better understanding of how to improve the process of conducting a

training/seminar in civil service.

Project Context

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 The Civil Service Commission, as the human resource institution of the

Philippine bureaucracy, is constitutionally mandated to promote morale,

efficiency, integrity, responsiveness, progressiveness, and courtesy in the civil

service.

At present, CSCRO VIII has fifty-four (54) plantilla positions, five (5) of

which are currently assigned at the Human Resource Division (HRD). The

HRD caters both public offerings and in-house learning interventions wherein

all learning and development interventions are open for all government

employees in the entire country and to private entities as well.

Theme 1: Problems Faced by Civil Service Commission Regional Office VIII

The proponents conduct an interview wherein the client state that

during the reservation and attendance, the agency face an issues in terms of

cancellation of reservation, monitoring of attendance, double entry of

participants, replacement of participants, information dissemination of training,

notifying or confirming of participants right after they have done the

reservation. The said issues of the agency are not easily done because they

operated manually during the process of reservation.

We have tried to design the system in such a way that the user may

not have any difficulty in using this package and further expansion is possible

without much effort. Even though we cannot claim that this work to be entirely

exhaustive, the main purpose of our exercise is perform each client’s activity

in computerized way rather than manually which is time consuming and

hassle (Patil, 2011).

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 On the other hand, one problem of participants is that they need to go

to Civil Service Regional Office for reservation. When the participants are not

able to go to the office, they need to send scan nomination form to the email

address of the agency. Due to this issues some clients are giving negative

feedback or comment to the agency and sometimes during the evaluation, the

participants gives low grades to the facilitator of the training or seminar.

Recognizing this, organizations have provided training to help them get better

at identifying the performance gaps and development need of every employee

(Bartolome & Weeks, 2006).

Theme 2: Issues in releasing certificates to the participants after the

Training or Seminar

Releasing certificates during the training or seminar is still a problem in

the agency. Some of the participant’s penmanship is not really readable due

to its manual process of reservation and taking attendance. As mentioned by

the client during interview he said that “The certificates that are not able to

claim during the training due to its name can be claim through LBC when the

participants are in Samar, Biliran, and Southern Leyte provinces.’ And in

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terms of sending files via email there some cases that they are not able to

receive the file because the email address of the participants are not readable

as well.

According to the study, all test scores for the subject with good

handwriting were significantly higher than those of the subjects with poor

handwriting, (Cornhill & Case-Smith, 1996). In relation to the study, the

consequences faced by the agency about poor handwriting or bad

penmanship are a serious problem in disseminating information in a public

service.

The proponents believe that to solve the different issues in Civil

Service Commission about the conduct of training, one of the solution is

through applying QR code for every training or seminar.

Applying QR code for Learning and Development program of Civil

Service Commission helps to improve the conduct of training or seminar in

terms of reservation, monitoring of attendance and requesting for certificates.

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It also provides solutions that can automate your document driven business

processes in a timelier, accurate and cost effective manner.

With the manual process of reservation and taking of attendance and

lack of manpower of the Office, the development and implementation of the

system is significant in upholding the mandate of the Commission. The

proponents believed that the system will greatly improve the transaction and

procedures, particularly in the Learning and Development needs of all human

resource in the country.

Objectives of the Study

This study aimed to develop and implement QR Code Based Algorithm

for Learning and Development Management System: The Case of Civil

Service Commission, Philippines, in order to deliver an efficient training and

development management.

Specifically, this study would like to:

1. Determine the current workflows of Civil Service Commission Regional

Office specifically on the training process and data used.

2. Remove human-factor mistake such as duplication of entry and

misplacement of tangible documents.

3. Develop a system that will generate printed reports regarding the

training/seminar.

4. Provide easy, accessible and convenient training reservation

experience for the participants.

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 5. Design a system that validates information entered by the applicant in

order to deal with inherent difficulties in retrieving information such as

releasing certificates.

6. Test, evaluate and comply the needs of Civil Service Commission

(CSC) according to the discussion made by the researcher and the

CSC based on ISO 25010:2011.

Theoretical Framework

In developing the Application of QR Code Based Algorithm for Learning

and Development Management System: The Case of Civil Service

Commission, Philippines, the researchers studied and adopted some theories

that will lead for an efficient, accurate, availability, and reliable system. The

theories are the following:

Work System Theory

Work System Theory is an integrated body of theory that includes a

form 1 (theory for analyzing) and form 2 (theory for explaining) where in

combination of the basis of a form 5 (theory for design and action), (Gregor,

2006). It gives a broad view for understanding systems in organizations,

whether or not those systems use lT exclusively. The definition of work

system that must be followed according to Steven Alter is “IT-reliant work

systems are work systems whose efficient and/or effective operation depends

on the use of IT”. (Alter, Communications of the Association for Information

Systems, 2003). Work system is a theory used as a tool for IT-reliant where it

can be information, technology and etc.

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 The concept of work system analyzes the systems in organization.

Where work system is a structure in which human participation and/or

machines work to produced product and/or services for both internal and/or

external consumer using technology, information and other resources (Alter,

Communications of the Association for information Systems, 2003). The

proponent choses this theory for the proposed system for some reasons. It

will be later on of the paper.

As the argue of Alters 2003, the work system theory uses a framework.

And this framework is a useful tool for analyzing and describing. Using the

representation of the nine elements which are participants, information,

technologies, products/services, customers, environment, infrastructure,

strategies, processes and activities of work system framework. Using this, the

system will work efficiently in terms of quality, quantity, and other

characteristic needed. Below is the work system framework of Steven Alter,

2003.

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 Figure 3.1 Work System Framework

The work system framework shows the elements that the proposed

system needed. The environment is the Civil Service Commission offices

where the proposed system will be deployed. As for the strategies, this are

the features, functions, and other things that the proponent plan to put in the

system for functionality. The example of this strategy is the QR code that the

proponent planned to use for the system customers. The customers, as for

this proposed system, the target customers are those people who work in

government or in a private organization/company who needs a training and/or

seminars for personal uses. Processes and activities are the things that the

proposed system offers for the customers. Participants are the workers in the

HR department of Civil Service Commission offices. Information are the data

about the training and/or seminar that the CSC offices offers. Technologies

that will be used for this proposed system are Desktop where the proposed

system can be used for the participants and/or the CSC workers, modem for

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the internet connect for both parties, gadgets that can be used for browsing

for the customer.

The Work System Life Cycle (WSLC) model views of how work

systems change over time through iterations involving planned change and

emergent (unplanned) change (Alter 2006b, 2008a, 2008b. 2009, 2010d). It

represents the initiation, development and implementation. The figure below

shows the representation of the work system life cycle.

Figure 3.2 Work System Life Cycle

As the elements where discussed and it has been analyzed and

described by the proponent for the proposed system now let’s talk about the

work system life cycle. How thus the proposed system life cycle will be? The

initiation part is where the planning, analyzing and designing falls down. The

proponent establishes these steps in initiating to come up with the idea of the

proposed system. After establishing the steps, the development of the

proposed system came in, the plan will be coded into the sublime specifically

code igniter. During the development the testing will also be executed. The

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next is implementation, as soon as the testing, the verification of the system is

approved the system will be implemented.

Scope of the Study

This study focuses on the development and implementation of a user-

friendly, Application of QR Code Based Algorithm for Learning and

Development Management System: The Case of Civil Service Commission,

Philippines wherein everyone who are qualified to participate in the trainings

or seminars offered by the Commission and with access to the internet can

utilize the system.

Clients will be able to avail of the following services offered by the

system such as ease in reservation of training they wish to attend, ease in

cancellation of training previously reserved, ease in requesting and availing of

certifications for training attended, ease in accessing information about the

desired training and rate the conduct of training online. A live streaming of

free trainings or seminars are also offered online. They can also file for job

application.

The Civil Service Commission Regional and Field Offices, as

administrators of the system will be able to easily monitor and/or manage the

participants of every training, easily issue certificates to participants who

attended the trainings, easily disseminate information of trainings and can

open easily the access of participants to rate the conduct of the training. They

can also monitor those participants who are watching live stream.

The system will be able to provide a standard web portal for managing

reservations to all trainings offered by the Commission (reservations and

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cancellations), provide a secured online database of all learning and

development interventions, with respective directory of participants,

conducted by the Commission, allow participants to submit a proof of payment

to trainings they wish to attend. Eliminate double entries to reservations, issue

certificates of training, upon request, reserve participants to trainings they

wish to attend. Inform participants through email of the confirmation of

reservation (auto-reply). The system will be able to remind or notify

participants of the payment status automatically through text or email seven

days before the schedule of the training. If the participant wish to cancel his or

her reservation, it must be 5 days before the training or seminar. And if ever

the participant did not cancel his or her reservation during the time frame

given, he or she is obliged to pay the 80% of the training/seminar fee. The

system will monitor the attendance of participants during the conduct of

trainings with the aid of QR Code and print necessary statistical reports for

purpose of monitoring and evaluation. It also offers a live streaming of free

trainings and/or seminars. In short, it offers equal opportunity for those people

who are capable and not capable to attend the trainings and seminars. It also

provides an online job application in Civil Service Commission.

Limitation of the Study

This study will be able to use only for the Civil Service Commission

Regional and Field Offices in the Philippines. The system does not provide an

online payment from the participants. And also it cannot generate a

certification of the participant, but it will only send a notification to the

administrator as a basis of giving a certificate. Another is, the privilege of the

user is that they can only access the online reservation form.

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