The Need for Information System
Now that we are in a great age of technology where information can be gathered anywhere, many businesses and organizations take advantage of all these free and accessible knowledge. With these, businesses needs and get to become more competitive to each other. They do this by solving all of their problems and improving the efficiency of all the processes the business undergo. And one of the methods to improve the efficiency of a business task or process is by translating business process to information technology done through with systems development. The result of systems development, which as what information specialists and computer literates all know as information system, is the solution to those business problems that really needs to be addressed for the business to become more successful.
When we talk of business, it is everything that deals with the circulation of money. And I think, almost all the things in the world involve money, which includes the schools and universities. The universities’ main goal is to educate people, but to do that, they still need to have the financial support from the government or from the students themselves for them to continue learning. Money is needed to have the facilities and resources needed for the students to learn in school. As we are now studying in a premier state university, University of Southeastern Philippines attracts a lot of students due to its cheaper tuition as a result of the support by the government. In USeP, there is really a large population needed to be managed well, which is a very hard task. To do that, the university must have systems that must be really good and capable enough for it to satisfy the needs and wants of each student of the school.
Information Systems in the University
There are a lot of information systems found in University of Southeastern Philippines; and one of the systems that students directly deal with is the Student Account Management Information System (SAMIS) or more known to students as enrollment system, which is actually the process as what Dr. Randy Gamboa said in our class discussion one time. The flow of the Student Account Management Information System or enrollment system in USeP is actually just simple – simple in a way that you just have to do this or that, go here and there. To understand more about the process, here are the following steps of the enrollment process:
1. Scholarship Renewal (for scholars only)
o In this step, students with different scholarships go to the Office of Student Services to have their ‘blue cards’ be certified as renewed in their respective scholarships. Different scholarships, such as Nograles, Garcia, CHED, and DOST, have different ways of renewing the scholarship of the students. The common thing is that they need their blue cards signed or certified by Prof. Susan D. Villarente, the OSS Director.
o This step is one of the most hassle steps of the enrollment process, for there are also a lot of students who have scholarships. I think that three fourths of the population of USeP is scholars, and most of them are Nograles and Gracia scholars. With almost the same process to get renewed in OSS, a very long queue would really make a student lose the patience and get frustrated with the slow process.
2. Payment of miscellaneous fees
o This is where students pay their fees on different academic clubs and organizations, local council, and the school publication.
o This step is the first for those students who do not have any scholarships. But for the scholars, in actuality, paying of the different fees could be interchanged with the renewal of scholarships in the Office of Student Services.
3. Advising
o Advising is the step where the students go to their respective colleges and approach their corresponding adviser, which depends on the year level of the student. In the Institute of Computing, and probably also to the other colleges, the student gives his or her passbook to let the teacher encode the grades to his or her records. The adviser would then tell the student which subjects to enroll and not allowed to enroll. Then the student would be given the Pre-registration Form or PRF to write the subjects and the schedule. He or she would go back to the adviser to check the subjects written by the student and to verify if the subjects written are allowable to enroll. If satisfied, the adviser would then sign the student’s PRF.
o Students cannot be advised by the adviser if he or she cannot present the official receipts from the payment of the miscellaneous fees.
4. Encoding of Subjects
o This step is the start of the raw data being entered to the computer and being processed to become information. Each college has its own encoder so in this step, there is no really hassle. In the Institute of Computing, Ma’am Jo encodes the subject by entering the subject code. The system then automatically loads the information about the subject and the schedule assigned for the subject. When the encoding of the subject is done, the encoder would then print the temporary Certificate of Registration (COR) that contains the subjects enrolled, their respective schedules and room assignments, some number of units, the and the fees to be paid.
o Encoding of subjects cannot be done if the students do not present his or her Pre Registration Form (PRF) and the certified blue card for the students having scholarships.
5. Bookkeeper (for scholars only) / Cashier (for non-scholars only)
o For the student without scholarships, they would go to the cashier to pay for the tuition fees. The cashier would take the temporary Certificate of Registration Form and keep it as their copy. And as for students with scholarships, they would also give the temporary Certificate of Registration to the Bookkeeper and present also the blue card signed by the Office of Student Services.
6. Registrar
o The last step of the enrollment process is to go to the registrar. This step is where the longest line of student is found. All the students from the different colleges would fall in one line to get their official copy of the Certificate of Registration (COR). There may be six registrar windows, and originally with each registrar window is dedicated to a specific college but now changed to everyone can go to different registrar windows, but there is only a single queue.
o To get the official Certificate of Registration (COR), the student must present the receipts of the miscellaneous fees paid on the second step. He or also would have his or her identification card to get a sticker that proves that the student is a certified one for the current school year and semester, signed by the registrar in charge.
The real problem of the enrollment process is the fact that the university has a large population and with the number of people serving in different stages of the enrollment process that is very small. There is no problem with the software and hardware of the system. The problem, as how I observed on the Student Account Management Information System, is in the people ware. The number of personnel serving the students is too small and unable to handle well the large population of the university. The performance of the service of the authority of the university is unsatisfying for us, having slow movements for some, late start of the service, or too much break for others.
Another information system found on the university is for the employees, the Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS). I really don’t know much about this system. But basically, the core functions of this system are about the payroll, work time, benefits, and information of the employees. When we talk of Human Resource, we also talk about recruitment. The people behind Human Resource are the ones responsible for the decision of who can be employed on the university or organization.
Systems Development Life Cycle
A “life cycle” can be defined differently in various fields of discipline but generally speaking, a life cycle is the complete process of change and development during somebody's lifetime or during the useful life of something such as an organization, institution, or manufactured product.
In our university, we assume that the life cycle used in the different is the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) as this is the traditional way to systems development. And as a premier university, there is a really big possibility to use the said method of systems development due to the integrity of having a reliable method.
Before we talk about the main question of this paper, we should know first the overview of systems development life cycle. SDLC has the following phases:
- Project Planning and Feasibility Study
o Generally, this is the phase where we define the problem and establish a high-level view of the intended project and determines its goals and objectives.
o Specifically, we should be able to define the necessary feasibility studies such as the technical, economic, legal, operational, and schedule feasibility in order to assess the achievability of the project.
- Requirement Analysis
o This is the stage where we literally analyze the requirements needed by the users for the system. Generally, this is the phase where we refine the project goals into defined functions and operation of the intended application. The gathering of data for this stage can be performed in many ways. One method is by interviewing the staff from different levels – from end users to senior management. Another method that can be used in this phase is examining the current business and systems documents and output. The documents and outputs may include current order documents, computer systems procedures and reports used by operations and senior management. Observation of current procedures can be also done as a method in generating requirements for the system because through observation, bottlenecks of the system can be detected.
- System Design
o This is the phase where we describe the desired features and operations in detail, including screen layouts, business rules, process diagrams, and other documentation.
o The details needed for this phase can include the hardware platform, software, outputs, user interface, modular design, test plan, conversion plan or the documentation.
- Implementation
o This is where the actual system code is written.
- Integration and Testing
o This is the stage where we bring the various modules together into a testing environment to check for functionality, errors, bugs, and interoperability.
- Deployment
o This is where the software is put into production and executes actual business processes. The actual installation of the hardware and software; training of personnel; and conversion of master files to new system are some of the processes done in this phase.
- Maintenance
o This is where changes, correction, additions are done if there are still errors undetected during the whole process of development.
How do you know that the life cycle was developed specifically for the university?
If you would ask me if the life cycle that I showed above is specifically for the university, I can say that it is. Why? Because every system developed for the university should generally undergo feasibility study; requirements analysis; system design; programming; integration and testing; implementation and maintenance and then back to feasibility study if ever a new problem in the system comes up.
Does the general SDLC meet our needs for the university?
Yes. Why do I say so?
It is because every system in the university should undergo the phases that I mentioned one way or another. Every system should undergo those phases at some point in time during development in order to proceed with the proper and organize way and to avoid project failure.
The type of system development model can be different among developers but all the phases that I mentioned are inherent in all models. Those phases may overlap or maybe repeated on some models but what’s important is that those phases exist and should be properly performed to ensure success.
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