Abstract

Limited access to institutional research outputs remains a documented barrier to student academic development, with studies identifying the absence of centralized digital repositories as a key contributor to difficulties in literature review, methodology comprehension, and research structuring. At Bacolod Trinity Christian School, Inc. (BTCSI), students could access only past senior high school (SHS) research outputs in physical form or through personal requests from former researchers, creating an unreliable and unsustainable system. This study designed, developed, and evaluated a web-based Institutional Repository (IR) system that centralized access to BTCSI's SHS research outputs while protecting student author privacy. Using an Agile capstone development methodology, the researchers built the system with Django, a Model-View-Template (MVT) architecture, Neon-hosted PostgreSQL for database management, Supabase for cloud file storage, and Render for deployment. The system incorporates role-based access control (RBAC), OTP-based authentication, and consent-based controls on author name visibility. It was evaluated by 17 purposively selected participants, comprising students, teachers, and IT staff, using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the User Experience Questionnaire Short Version (UEQ-S), supplemented by open-ended qualitative feedback. The system achieved a mean SUS score of 86.18 (SD = 11.86), rated Grade A (Excellent), and UEQ-S subscale means of 2.53 (SD = 0.74) for Pragmatic Quality and 2.38 (SD = 0.66) for Hedonic Quality, both rated Excellent. Thematic analysis of open-ended responses identified centralized access and search functionality as the system's most valued features, with authentication workflow and interface design cited as the primary areas for improvement. These results demonstrate that a Django-based IR system is a viable, usable, and privacy-conscious solution for managing institutional research outputs in a Philippine secondary school context.

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