Edu-leaders

ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior was set up by the Ministry of HRD in 1997 and is the first in the series of IIITs. The institute is primarily a post graduate institute offering integrated post graduate programmes and post graduate M Tech and MBA programmes. It has about 700 students on roll. Every semester IIITM runs more than 70 courses and follows a semester credit based registration system wherein every student is required to register for various courses in a semester. The registration process consists of two parts: the financial part and academic part. The complexity can be gauged from the following figures:

·There are about 70 courses to be registered every semester

·There are a variety of financial transactions to be handled: these include tuition fees, hostel fees, mess charges and institute dues

·Reports such as attendance, examination grades, mark sheets, exception reports are to be generated for every course

The manual process was cumbersome, used to take lot of time, and most importantly was not able to respond to changes. There was no integration of financial and academic registration. The problem to be solved was how to make the system transparent, responsive and integrated.

The options included purchasing commercial proprietary software and customising it to suit their needs. The other option was to develop an in-house solution based on the creativity of the students. There was another option - to continue with the existing manual system. ABV, Gwalior adopted an in-house developed, web enabled system-- Student Online Record System (SORS).

This was based on the following considerations;

a) IITM is an IT and Management institute, so developing an in-house IT based solution and acting as a role model to other institutes was a key factor

b)There was a talent pool of students available and this enabled the spirit of learning-by-doing.

A team comprising faculty members, administration and students was formed. The mandate was explained through a series of interactive meetings with end users (namely academic section, finance section, students and faculty) to understand the users needs and translate these needs into SRS and then develop the system. The system was developed using Droodle technology. The entire effort took about four months right from conceptualization till implementation.

The challenges were in understanding the requirements of the end users and translating these requirements into system requirements. The challenge was also in educating users. These challenges were overcome by having a series of meetings between the developers, analysts and the end users, making the end users comfortable by showing the prototypes, generating the reports that were generated manually and eventually gaining the confidence of the users.

Benefits:

a) The system is online, transparent and user friendly

b) The reconciliation of financial transaction is instantaneous

c) The system is paperless

d) Work load has decreased and work efficiency has increased

e) Easy availability of profile and contact details of students

f) Category-wise, income-wise, blood group-wise, gender-wise, hostel-wise student’s analysis.

g) Transparency of Financial records.

The institute has benefited immensely by integrating financial and academic part. The financial transactions are realized immediately. There is a good monitoring and tracking system at the back end. This has helped in streamlining our financial and academic section.

The students have benefited since SORS provides an active communication channel between faculty and students and between institute administration and students. Students are also able to track their own academic progress. Easy accessibility and reduction in non-value added time is appreciable. The faculty has benefited by using the SORS system since their administrative load has reduced substantially.