ITEAAS V8. APPLICATION OF MICROSOFT ACCESS TO PERFORM INTERGRATED TERTIARY STUDENTS ADMISSIONS. BY EMMANUEL KIZITO KABUNDU et al

Transcription

1 ITEAAS V8. APPLICATION OF MICROSOFT ACCESS TO PERFORM INTERGRATED TERTIARY STUDENTS ADMISSIONS. BY EMMANUEL KIZITO KABUNDU et al ; Cell: DATE: AUGUST 2014

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. INTRODUCTION.3 2. SYSTEM COMPONENTS ACCESS DATABASE USER INTERFACE/ DATA COLLECTION FORMS Share point services Iron Speed Designer ITEAAS APPLICATION Main Menu Back-Up Database Add/Update School Subjects Add/Update Colleges Add/Update Programs Add/Update Prerequisites Add/Update Additional Qualifications Add/Update Grade-Value System Add/ Update Applicants Information Admission Control RESULTS General Application Results Integrated Querying and Admission Letter Generation 20 5 ADVANTAGES OF CENTRALIZED ADMISSIONS 23 6 SUMMARY.23

3 1. INTRODUCTION: In this article we talk about the huge potential possessed by Microsoft access databases in coming up with a practical, working solution which models the admissions business for students moving from secondary schools to tertiary institutions such as Colleges and Universities. The purpose is to automate and thus simplify as much of the process as much as possible, and to ensure that the process is integrated or interlinked between different colleges across an entire state or Country, such as Botswana. The Authors of this Article have spent quite some time handling the admissions business at one of the Tertiary institutions in Botswana. They have successfully used a Microsoft excel automated application to perform this process repeatedly over five years, and it has turned out a success in each of these instances. Never the less, excel is a flat file database and despite its computation power, lags behind Microsoft access in many areas, because access is a relational database. Though access may not have the full computational potential possessed by spreadsheets, appropriate VBA function programming can go a long way in making up for this gap. The Excel based application can only be limited to one institution, unlike the access based application. In this article, we shall call the Excel based application TEAAS, which means Tertiary Education Admissions Assistant System, while the Microsoft based application will be called ITEAAS, meaning Integrated Tertiary Education Admissions Assistant System.

4 2 SYSTEM COMPONENTS: The ITEAAS system that will be described consists of mainly two (2) parts. 2.1 ACCESS DATABASE: The first part which is the core component and resides with Microsoft access, is the database itself which possesses the computational power to allocate students to various colleges and programs depending upon the courses they applied for and their performance. This part should reside on the Admissions Server Computer and should only be accessed by the Admissions Administrator or any other official who is tasked with the role of running the application. The Server would better be located with the company doing the centralized admissions process for the whole country or region. This task can also be done by the Ministry of Education itself. In this case the server will be located at the ministry. 2.2 USER INTERFACE/ DATA COLLECTION FORMS: The Second Part consists of the User interface, mainly Data Collection forms in form of web pages or share point lists. The Users (who are the colleges spread over the entire State, Province or Country) should access the application through the Web. There are mainly 2 methods which can be used to do this Using the Microsoft Share point Server: The server used for centralized admissions can be a share point server. Usually it runs on 64-bit operating systems. In this case users (tertiary Institutions) will access it through share point lists over a network. The main forms that users will deal with will be forms to enter applicant s data and forms to enter details about the individual College program details. Applicants are the students who have applied to a particular institution or College. Other forms do not need to be created for users. So basically there will be two types of forms available to users for data entry over the network or over the web Using Iron Speed designer: Iron speed designer is a software falling under Rapid Application Development Platforms. It is very handy in creating web-based applications from Microsoft access, MySQL, oracle, and other databases. It can also be used to create Tablet applications, including Apple Ipad applications and applications for tablets which use android operating systems. It uses Visual Studio programming languages to automatically generate the relevant code which creates web pages for the Access database. It is worth noting that although the user is not so conversant with the visual studio programming languages, he/ she can still successfully generate fairly good applications, provided he/she has designed the access database back-end well. So the Iron speed designer application will have to be installed on the server where the access database is. Iron speed designer just like share point services allows us to concentrate on the core business of modeling the admissions process using the admissions policies of the various colleges with the help of Access. Thus the Web-based User interface will be generated by any of these Two (2) Applications.

5 3. ITEAAS APPLICATION We will describe how the ITEAAS application at the server end operates using the various screens captured for this program. 3.1 Main Menu Figure1: Main Menu Once the application is opened and a database password is entered, The main menu screen will appear as indicated in Figure1. There are various buttons which navigate to other forms to perform various functions as indicated below:

6 3.2 Back-Up Database: This will back-up the database in the same folder where the actual database is, indicating the date when the back-up was created. Please back up the database after important changes by way of data entries, have been made to it. Manage Users: Figure2: User Management

7 This will open a User Management form as indicated in Figure2. The tasks indicated by the buttons can then be performed by the administrator, including adding users, deleting users, changing passwords. 3.3 Add/ Update School Subjects Figure3: Add/Update School Subjects Here Subjects taught in the secondary schools will be added or updated. This data is important before any applicant s data is entered because the enterd applicants data is dependent upon the school subjects available.

8 3.4 Add/Update Colleges: Figure4: College Information This form is used to enter information of all the available colleges with respect to which integrated admissions is going to be done. Please enter all the Indicated fields.

9 3.5 Add/ Update Programs Figure5: College program Information Here information about the college programs will be entered as indicated in the Figure5 above. This responsibility probably will belong to the particular college to enter its own programs into the system through web forms of a given network, or the list of the programs can be sent to the person administering the database for data entry. Thus a web form or share point list similar to this form has to be created and made available to each college to enter data about all the college s programs that are offered.

10 3.6 Add/Update Prerequisites Figure6: Prerequisite Qualifications. This form will collect information about prerequisite qualifications required by different programs

11 3.7 Add/Update Additional Qualifications Figure7:Additional Qualifications This form will collect information about Additional qualifications required by different programs.

12 3.8 Add/Update Grade Value System: Figure8:Grade Value Systems This Form will collect information about all the grade value systems used in the country/ region and the number of points each grade under each systems is worth.

13 3.9 Add/Update Applicant s Information Figure9: Applicant s Information

14 This Form will collect information about all the applicants. Please enter all the subject codes and the subject grades that the applicant attempted and scored. A maximum of 12 subjects can be collected per applicant. Different college programs require different types and numbers of compulsory subjects, and also require different numbers of non-compulsory subjects depending upon the admissions policy of the institution. That is why this information is critical to the successful admissions process. A web form/ share point list similar to this must be generated and made available over the network or web for each college to enter information of all the applicants who applied to that particular college. Figures 10 and 11 still deal with collection of applicant s data. Figure10: Applicant s Data/ Information

15 A web form/ share point list must be created that corresponds to this form. Figure11: Applicant s Data/ Information A web form/ share point list must be created that corresponds to this form.

16 3.10 Admission Control: Figure 12: Admission Control

17 Figure13: Admission Control After the Applicant s Data has been entered, the people dealing with admissions at the server end will go into this page and set the Relevant cut-off grade points for the relevant compulsory subjects for each program under each college Relevant cut off points for the non-compulsory subjects for each program under each college Program cut-off points in case applicant does not have the relevant additional qualification Program cut-off points in case the applicant possesses the relevant additional qualification When these figures are entered, automatically the numbers that will be admitted to the program in question will be indicated in the last column, after refreshing the form. So for a particular program, if the college wants to dish out 60 admission letters, then at the server end of the system, under this page, the people dealing with admissions have to alter the cut-off points for the different scenarios outlined above until they reach a number that is as close as possible to 60. It should be noted that the alteration must not violate the College s admission policy with regards to the program under consideration.

18 4 RESULTS: It is after all this information has been entered correctly that ITEAAS will generate an accurate assessment of which course/ program and college the applicant deserves to placed in, depending upon the quality of their results. 4.1 General Application Results: Figure14:General Admission results

19 Figure 15:General Admissions Results This page displays the programs and Colleges to which the students have been admitted.

20 4.2 Integrated Querying and Admission letter generation Figure16: Integrated Querying and Report Generation As indicated in Figure16, there are about 11 different criteria on the basis of which querying can be done so that the resulting information can be used to generate the appropriate letters of admission. This includes:

21 Applicants admitted to a particular College Applicants admitted to a particular program Applicants of a particular Gender Applicants possessing a particular additional qualification An applicant possessing a particular Identity number Applicants whose surname have a set of characters Applicants whose interview test score was > or < or >= or <= or = to a particular score Applicants whose overall total grade score was > or < or >= or <= or = to a particular value Applicants whose total grade score in the compulsory subjects was > or < or >= or <= or = to a particular value Applicants whose year of completion of their secondary school was > or < or >= or <= or = to a particular year Applicants whose Age is > or < or >= or <= or = to a particular Age Once this information is generated according to the querying criteria set, the results can be exported to excel lists and ed to the relevant Colleges. Alternatively the information can be used to generate admission letters, a sample of which is shown in figures 17 and 18 below. This integrated querying interface can also perform the functions done by the Admission per program and Admissions per College modules. So those last two modules will not be discussed here because their functionality can be performed by the integrated querying module.

22 Figure17: Sample admission letter. The second part of this letter is shown in Figure18.

23 These results once tested against the results of the often used TEAAS indicate that the ITEAAS and the TEAAS if tested against one admitting college produce identical results. To test the ITEAAS against many admitting Colleges, which perform admissions in an integrated way, we had to do a manual comparison since there was no other software readily available for comparisons. The results obtained by manual means concurred with those obtained by the ITEAAS. 5 ADVANTAGES OF CENTRALIZED ADMISSIONS 1. It eliminates duplicate admissions within a country or district or state, which means that students will not turn down admission invitations because they have secretly applied to other Colleges within the region, without the knowledge of a particular admitting College. 2. Centralized admissions makes it easy for the Government to have ready access to data for processing student sponsorships. 3. Centralized admissions to an extent removes the burden incurred by each College during admissions processes. The only burden that remains will be for data entry through the web. 4. Students can drop their applications to any nearest college so that data may be entered through the web to the central server. It eliminates unnecessary time wastage and expenses to travel to a college located far away (because it is where they applied to) in order to submit their application forms. Thus the data capturing college does not need to be the one where the student applied. He can drop his/ her application forms to the nearest College, and his/ her information once captured can still be available on the server. 6 SUMMARY: Microsoft access, hand in hand with some RAD tools can create a powerful application which can significantly improve the admissions processes for most of the Tertiary institutions within a given region. It is a model worth implementing.