Introduction
Universities in Germany are financed by the government. The high discrepancy
between intended and real study length made the government to start up a pilot
project to provide better information facilities for the students of the
faculty of business administration. This project runs in cooperation with the
chair for management information systems II. Besides the so-called 'hard'
measures this is a 'soft' measure without the necessity to change the policy of
education.
For more comprehensive supply of information for students, some public
institutions belonging to the faculty are included. These are the 20 chairs of
the faculty and the dean' s office.
The chairs are units of the faculty similar to institiutes, but rather with the
tasks of teaching than doing research. The dean' s office has the task of
consulting students, performing the registration for exams, organizing
activities for the chairs, and doing coordination among the chairs. The dean is
the spokesman of the faculty.
Information needed by students:
The lack of information leads to a longer study period. The primary aim of the
project is to reduce the average period of one's study by providing the needed
information. It is shown in a public opinion poll[1], that there is a demand
for better information policies in order to help you to organize study
according to one's skills and in view of job perspectives. So it can be avoided
to choose the wrong courses. Before taking part at certain exams students have
to get certificates. So there is demand for better impart of the exam
regulations to prevent late production of certificates.
A further demand is better access to bulletin boards, as the bulletin boards of
the chairs are spread over the campus. So ist is likely to miss out important
announcements. Beyond this, other support during study is desired like
roomplans and opening times for public institutions, telephone lists and
locations of the staff etc.
An indirect benefit for students follows, when public institutions reduce their
amount of work for administration by better information facilities. So they
have more time for the students.
Support for the chairs:
The main part of the information needed comes from
the chairs. To gain their acceptance for the system we offer them relief in
administrating work. Of course the chairs use their computers for
administrating tasks yet. To offer a new administrating system means to include
the functionality of their administration as good as possible. But beyond this
with WWW and Mosaic as uniform client for all systems we can offer access to
centralized data. The results of a survey show that the chairs have demand for
the following items:
- Administration of dissertations:
- Announcement of new topics.
- After autentification the student can send an e-mail to his conductor.
- Registration of the dissertation at the office for examinations.
- Tool for time scheduling.
- Insertion of the dissertation into the chair library with keyword search
facility.
- Administration of Seminars and Exercise works.
- Taking inventories.
- Retrieval and administrating of student dates.
- Data for statistics about the current situation of the students.
Support for the dean's office:
The dean's office can be relieved by the following items:
- Registration of exams and automatic assignment of seats.
- Relief of student consultants by query functions by keywords.
- Automatic passing of certificates.
bmueller@rummelplatz.uni-mannheim.de