Boosting Departments' Admin Systems

 

With the start of the 1995/96 academic year, CityU instructors and administrators should enjoy increased convenience and more powerful analysis capabilities. The Computing Services Centre will provide this through CITYDIS, the CityU Distributed Information System. Basically, the change will distribute information throughout CityU to local servers, computers that serve users and control computers within a department or section.

To make this possible, the Administrative Data Processing section of the Computing Services Centre has based their system on Oracle, a popular relational database management system (RDBMS). A relational database is a database that has information stored on multiple tables, and these are related to each other through logical connections. For example, a personnel table with your name and address would relate to a financial table with your name and pay scale.

For distributed systems, additional benefits result because data is stored on local servers, which increases operations' independence. As a result, when there is a problem on the network most operations can still run, since unaffected servers still operate normally. Since the systems are based on Windows, they will also be easy to use.

At the moment, one system is in use, and two more will soon be finished for a total of three systems on-line in autumn. The Class Administration System (CAS) already automates the numerous tasks necessary to effectively coordinate CityU classes. This involves timetabling classes, arranging instructors, printing attendance sheets, and updating student records, to name but a few. As a result, presentation, accuracy, and consistency improve.

The Marks Processing System (MPS) will support teachers' marking. With MPS, they will save time and increase the accuracy of their grading. The system will enable teachers to record, calculate, analyse, and scale marks. Finally, teachers will electronically send their marks to the Registrar's Office.

The Student Information Enquiry (SIE) System will enable staff in academic departments to access their students' data, statistical analysis, and produce reports as needed. It will also help admissions decisions, by identifying trends in applicants and their success at CityU. In turn, this will help identify ways to strengthen academic success. To protect privacy, SIE limits users to only essential information.

These systems will benefit CityU in many ways. For example, for the approximately one thousand MPS and SIE users, sixty CAS users, and users of other CITYDIS systems, work will certainly be easier and more efficient. Additionally, CITYDIS will have a ripple effect as it frees up time for more productive activities. Lecturers will be able to reduce the time spent marking, administrators will spend less time checking that marks are turned in and accurate, and students get lecturers who have more energy for teaching. This is only the beginning. And for the future? Look for more such systems that are already under development - and added benefits.

Computing Services Centre City University of Hong Kong ccnetcom@cityu.edu.hk