The Computerworld Honors Program
Honoring those who use Information Technology to benefit society
LOCATION:
Moscow, N/A, RU

YEAR:
2007

STATUS:
Laureate

CATEGORY:
Education and Academia

NOMINATING COMPANY:
Sybase

ORGANIZATION:
Russian Economic Academy of G.V. Plekhanov

PROJECT NAME:
University education process control system

Short Summary
The work on the Project was devoted to two primary needs of a modern university. The first requirement was to support the module-based structure of recommended educational programs. The second requirement was to incorporate a multiple-criterion scale in assessing the quality of education. This scale would then be used as the basis of the education and curriculum development process to reflect the integration of global educational standards.

The introduction of the University education process control (UEPC) system has resulted in an overall improvement in the management quality of the educational institute, along with the renovation of the information-delivery infrastructure. The new system creates informational unity across the university, through installing the common informational gateway of the university and improves the employee workload by making them more effective, able to work faster and by eliminating monotonous tasks.


Introductory Overview
The Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics UEPC system was a product of over five years of theoretical development and the practical implementation. The project encompassed the application of new technology not only to the process of education, but also to the entire educational management system. Because of this wide-ranging effect, the UEPC project is regarded to be one of the most valuable innovations in recent years, contributing to the overall growth of Russian industry and helping to meet the challenge of globalization.

Specifically, the implementation effort included focus on the two primary needs of a modern educational institution. The first requirement was to support the module-based structure of recommended educational programs. The second requirement was to incorporate a multiple-criterion scale in assessing the quality of education. This scale would then be used as the basis of the education and curriculum development process to reflect the integration of global educational standards.

Realizing that a key element to the success of the project lay in the definition of a common data management framework, the Academy’s IT group spent several years trying to introduce the new information environment for its departments. This was hindered by a lack of a commonality in the data stores and toolsets among departments. Once Sybase was selected as the foundation data management technology, the project could proceed across all departments.

The UEPC system supports the personalization of individual study plans, and automatically compiles these into a common reporting template. This feature allows the Academy to be aware of and attend to the needs of every single student while still maintain a consistent set of forms and standards. Additionally, the system provides capability to automatically generate, update, and maintain the dynamic Teaching Context to enrich the teacher’s arsenal, giving them more freedom to implement successful teaching strategies as: imitative games, interactive tests, specific training, etc. The ability to define and tailor student curriculum and manage instruction materials efficiently are the key elements to a successful educational facility.

Beyond the student and teacher functionality, the UEPC system also impacts back-office functions. Previously silo-ed or manual efforts are replaced by a common data structure, allowing insights across the Academy. Clear, accurate and current financial information flows inside the university, making financial oversight and scrutiny easier and ensuing decisions more beneficial to the Academy. This improves the quality of decision-making and improves the effectiveness of allocating finite financial and technical resources, while ensuring that the university increases its profitability.

The system also impacts the Human Resources department; employees can immediately access critical information, and reduce manual paperwork.

The final piece of the project extends the information system to the Web. The integration of the UEPC project with the Academy’s Web server allows remote access to systems, and supports e-learning system. The Academy can now offer the rich curriculum content and student personalization via distance learning, as key element in Russia’s far-flung regions.

The practical benefits to the larger society are many. The UEPC system improves the overall quality of education and systems, creates informational unity across the university, installs a common informational gateway of the university using cutting-edge technology, and makes the work of employees more effective, fast and far less monotonous.

The e-learning system is the most reasonable and effective means of education and to maintain the Academy’s high standards because of its rapid expansion capabilities, both in terms of geography, and in staff and students. Currently, the Academy has more that 10,000 students, 200 teachers, doctors of philosophy, professors, assistant professors and senior lecturers. The Academy’s international and regional branches include 2100 students in 9 branches including Uzbekistan and Mongolia.


Benefits
Has your project helped those it was designed to help?   Yes

What new advantage or opportunity does your project provide to people?
The UEPC system was designed to alleviate the everyday problems of the employees of the Academy in their daily activities, such as the following: collecting data, preparing reports, analyzing information and managing the business-side of the Academy using both collected and stored data. From the moment the system was introduced, it became obvious that the desired objectives were reached, says a user, “the system is very convenient and saves a lot of time and effort.” Additionally, the system provides the ability to prepare statistical reports on demand, allowing invaluable insights into operations, thereby allowing the staff to perform their duties more efficiently.

Has your project fundamentally changed how tasks are performed?   Yes

How do you see your project's innovation benefiting other applications, organizations, or global communities?
In many respects the system changed the way tasks are performed, for example, when building a curriculum. Previously, this task required the extensive effort to compile timetables, arrange groups of students, and locate appropriate rooms for studies. However, with the new system, these functions are now all completed automatically.

The most powerful impact of the system is how communication changed across the Academy. As information about students, teachers, timetables and curriculums is now stored in a comprehensive and electronic way, this affects every single process beginning with the application to work or study all the way to graduation. Students can build a personalized curriculum, teachers have access to successful teaching modules and methodologies, administrators can manage business and operational decision-making and the public at large can access Academy information on-line.

Most importantly, application and graduation rates have increased due to the high quality of education management through the EUPC System.

The opportunity of EUPC to prepare a personalized curriculum for the students gave good results in time saving and satisfaction of personal interests of students. It means that the process of choosing some additional disciplines for those students who want to extend their knowledge in any other field except the one they are studying is performed much faster and without any bureaucratic time losses. Undoubtedly, this feature of the EUPC System allows the Academy to serve a larger population, handle students’ applications to expand their curriculum more effectively, and manage more students. Significant time savings due to the available information, needed for regular report preparation for the rector and university authorities as for the ministry, was collected in a common database – resulting in a 2X performance increase.


The Importance of Technology
How did the technology you used contribute to this project and why was it important?
The years-long process of design, requirements-gathering and implementation is a testament to the vision of the project. It also emphasizes the challenges faced by the IT team: disparate systems, manual and complex processes, information stored in multiple formats and the integration obstacles inherent with a mixed environment. The Academy employed the Sybase technology set of PowerDesigner, Adaptive Server Enterprise v.12.5.3 and PowerBuilder Enterprise v.10 as crucial elements while building the system. PowerDesigner modeled the data and processes, helping to visualize the overall information requirements.

Adaptive Server Enterprise uses T-SQL, which significantly simplifies the process of data manipulation and gives wide opportunities for the application developers. This common language capability allowed for the integration across systems and data structures. At the moment this is the main storage of students’ personal information including their course results (their address, age, passport information etc…), curriculums and course standards.

The unique feature of PowerBuilder is that the GUI development is fully automated, especially for database, which gives the additional flexibility for the application that is very important for any system of educational management. The IT team was able to develop code for use across multiple systems – ensuring consistency and commonality in processes.

The EUPC System is not the first large-scale IT solution in the Academy. Previously there were also some interesting applications, but the main problem was their disassociation. And now, after five year work of the EUPC System we should admit that there are also some problems concerning consolidation of many specific applications. But we trust that our work together with the technical help from Sybase will result in the common information gateway which will gather all applications and data streams around it.


Originality
What are the exceptional aspects of your project?
Mostly because the fact that the majority of applications developed for the universities are very resource-intensive (e.g. ERP), needed a great deal of effort and expense for programmers to test and implement. The unique feature of the EUPC System is its orientation on educational process, specifically on students and curriculum management. The architecture was specifically designed to support the overall educational systems. In retrospect, this was the right decision, as proven by the amount of educational organizations interested in buying the EUPC System seems to grow every year.

How is it original?
The UEPC system is no doubt one of the most original applications of its kind. The usage of Data Warehouse technology (Sybase IQ Developer v.12.6) and the dynamic report building based on the OLAP technology is not only the significant aspect of the system but also its core element. The system allows report development across three dimensions - faculty, year and contingent parameters (academic excellence, student nationality, faculty tenure and scientific achievements). After an analysis of the available educational software solutions for higher education information management, it was apparent that systems like the UEPC are simply not available.

Is it the first, the only, the best or the most effective application of its kind?   Most effective

Success
Has your project achieved or exceeded its goals?   Exceeded

Is it fully operational?   Yes

How many people benefit from it?   5,000+

If possible, include an example of how the project has benefited a specific individual, enterprise or organization. Please include personal quotes from individuals who have directly benefited from your work.
The UEPC system showed immediate gains for users. It saves effort and minimizes time spent on regularly repeated actions – for both collecting and organizing data. The system is fully operational and has attained its initial goals, now the IT team is focused on further developments as well as updates and maintenance. The system consists of different parts, all serving its own department of the Academy. The number of users of the system is about sixty: in each of 12 Dean’s Offices – about 3-4; HR Department - 10; Department managing the application process to the Academy - 4; Department managing students’ personal information - 2. Says a faculty member, “Now it is so easy and convenient to develop course exams’ reports and consolidate the reports for all the courses.”

We also believe that the EUPC System positively impacts the educational process in terms of professional knowledge. More than a half of the programmers in our department are students of the Academy, studying at the faculty of Informational Technology and supplementing their course learning through our internal technical projects. (Please see Appendix #1)


How quickly has your targeted audience of users embraced your innovation? Or, how rapidly do you predict they will?
Even though the Academy did not conduct a return on investment analysis, other measures of success, such as quality, could be assessed easily. Among them are an improved quality of management, reduced time losses on bureaucracy, better quality of service and others. The EUPC System provides the foundation to make strategic decisions more economically justified. For example, an analysis of students, when choosing their specializations or identifying those who attend on their own financial basis, are crucial data points in developing the Academy’s policy of development and educational management. Secondly, an in-depth analysis of students’ records of different teachers is very helpful in the HR department. Finally, the analysis of applicants and their interests gives much needed insight to build effective courses for those who are planning to study at the Academy.

Difficulty
What were the most important obstacles that had to be overcome in order for your work to be successful? Technical problems? Resources? Expertise? Organizational problems?
The most difficult obstacles were concerned with the process of implementation and integration. The staff was generally very conservative and afraid of any changes, so were reluctant to discuss ‘new technology’ in their department. But, after presenting the benefits and opportunities of the system, these objectors agreed to the required effort for the implementation. Once in production, they were glad to have UEPC system installed. Not long ago, when new updates of the system were ready and we tried to install the new system, one member of the HR Department said to her colleagues in front of our developer: “Don’t you remember the times when we all were so much afraid about this new UEPC System? But now how much it is helpful and how many problems it has solved.” It was the defining moment for our team and we all became obsessed about the idea of making the system the best one for the educational management.

Often the most innovative projects encounter the greatest resistance when they are originally proposed. If you had to fight for approval or funding, please provide a summary of the objections you faced and how you overcame them.
The one problem among many throughout the implementation process is the unwillingness of the staff (who previously worked with paper information) to work with computers, especially when it involves additional training. For example, our developers faced the general disinclination to help the process of implementation, identify bugs, discuss the program, or even claim that it didn’t work all of which created serious obstacles on our five year way to success. We should mention that after the implementation their negative attitude sufficiently decreased and now they are vocal in their satisfaction with the program. We still believe that this difficult process (of introducing the EUPC System) could have been seriously slowed by reluctant staff if we had not had the help of the Academy president. The head of Academy actively promotes EUPC System and very much supports its implementation.
Digital/Visual Materials
The Program welcomes nominees to submit digital and visual images with their Case Study. We are currently only accepting .gif, .jpg and .xls files that are 1MB or smaller. The submission of these materials is not required; however, please note that a maximum of three files will be accepted per nominee. These files will be added to the end of your Case Study and will be labeled as "Appendix 1", "Appendix 2" or "Appendix 3." Finally, feel free to reference these images in the text of your Case Study by specifically referring to them as "Appendix 1", "Appendix 2" or "Appendix 3."

Currently Uploaded Appendices:
Appendix1.JPG