Design and Implementation of An Offline-Optimized Web-Based Course Material Management System for Engineering Education in Resource-Constrained Universities

Abstract

Access to structured academic materials has been a major problem for engineering education in university system. This is because students always depend on fragmented channels, including social media groups, photocopied handouts, and peer-to-peer sharing to obtain learning resources. This study aims to design, implement and evaluate an offline-optimized web-based course material management system for engineering education in resource-constrained universities. The design of this system was carried out by mixed-method research design in combination with questionnaire-based needs assessment, and software development. Furthermore, post-deployment performance evaluation was carried out for the research design. The study collected a total population consisting of six hundred and forty (640) valid student responses,. The system development was carried out using ReactJS for the frontend interface, Flask for backend services, PostgreSQL for structured data management, and Amazon Web Services S3 for secure cloud storage. Other tools included in the development of the system were Docker and Digital Ocean hosting. Security features such as password hashing, HTTPS communication, and role-based access control. The usability post-deployment test was carried out at score rate of 5, the results showed that respondents’ (students) experienced difficulty in accessing academic materials at 95%. In addition, students expressed willingness to adopt the proposed platform at 91%. The usability post-deployment test showed a high overall satisfaction score of 4.62 of 5 score, at strong ratings for navigation, file accessibility, and download speed. The technical evaluation result showed reliability of system performance at an average response time of 1.84 seconds and 99.2% uptime. Hence, the system developed has provided a sustainable model that could be replicated across engineering faculties and similar higher education institutions in need.