BNCC/DE P. 13b
2004-2005
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES
BOARD FOR NON-CAMPUS COUNTRIES AND DISTANCE EDUCATION
Friday, May 20, 2005, St Lucia
UWIDEC’s Information Management System
Background
A fundamental cornerstone of any successful organization is how it manages information - and
for a university this means information relating to staff, students, courses, programmes and
finance. UWI has taken the route adopted by many universities of buying “off-the-shelf” software
for each of these administrative functions, the most recent being the Banner Student Records
System. Unfortunately, the introduction of the Banner Student Records System at UWI seems to
support researchers’ observations that the introduction of new technology in an organization
tends to reinforce the old systems rather than encourage new possibilities (Lian, 2000; Dutton
and Loader, 2002). It now seems most likely that UWI will continue as three administratively
separate units.
This cannot and must not be the case for UWIDEC - we need to embrace the possibilities
offered by new technologies. This is not to say that we must be “technologically-led”.
Sustainable change is neither solely “technology led” nor solely “organizational/agency driven”.
Instead, change arises from a complex interaction among technology, people and the
organization (Marshall and Gregor, 2002; Orlikowski and Lacono, 2001). In recognition of this,
UWIDEC will develop an Information Management System that integrates software specifically
designed for the administrative functions mentioned above, but “adaptively” to take account of
the evolutionary development of these systems. In order to create an adaptive and integrated
system of this sort, it will be necessary to have access to the software code for ongoing
development – and this means using open source or home-built software.
“Off-the-shelf” versus open source/home-built software
In his debunking of the myth that “technology is the answer” Bates (2004) is himself in danger of
subscribing to a fairly recent myth (one that has been vigorously promoted by a large software
company) – that institutions shouldn’t use open source software because it “will have
continuous and ongoing development” and so is not “stable and predictable” (Bates, 2004,
p.14). Firstly, open source software is not unique in having continuous and ongoing
development. Most commercial software has upgrades or new editions every year or two, and
unlike their open source counterparts, the new versions come with additional cost. Secondly,
with fairly mature open source software, one can always stay with the existing version if one
doesn’t want the additional features provided by the new version, whereas with the commercial
counterpart one is sometimes forced to upgrade when the annual licence becomes due.
However, in a competitive HE environment and with increasing consumer technological
sophistication, the acquisition of ‘best’ technology is only ever likely to be temporary (Haywood,
2002). There will always be pressure for change and this does present an ongoing challenge to
management (Huynh, Umesh & Valacich, 2003). “Continuous and ongoing development” is
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almost a defining characteristic of the IT industry, and is, in fact, a good reason for adopting
popular open source software since this way one has access to a veritable army of volunteer
software developers working around the world to provide innovatory enhancements free of
charge to the institutional user.
UWIDEC’s Information Management System
Reeve Ramharry (based in UWIDEC, Trinidad and Tobago) is leading the team creating the
UWIDEC integrated information management system comprising the following components:
(1) UWIDEC Programme/Course Database – that contains information on each course,
including information on when offered, pre-requisites, etc;
(2) UWIDEC Student Records System (SRS) - that contains all the student application,
enrolment, registration details, etc;
(3) UWIDEC Staff Database - that contains staff location, contact, etc., details for all those
associated with UWIDEC;
(4) Learning Management System (Moodle) - that contains the online components of our
courses, and interfaces with the UWIDEC SRS for student validation and enrolment details,
to allow students to access course material, participate in email discussion lists, etc;
(5) UWIDEC Website Management System - that automatically populates web pages on the
UWIDEC website with information extracted from databases of staff and course information,
and includes a simple system for staff (without knowledge of html) to add their own content;
(6) UWIDEC Individualised Student Portal (My-UWIDEC) - that automatically populates a web
page for each student with information extracted from systems (1), (2), (3) and (4) above,
e.g., enabling the student to click on a course in which they are enrolled and obtain the
contact details for the coordinator and tutor, their assignment results, etc;
(7) UWIDEC Individualised Staff Portal (My-UWIDEC) - that automatically populates a web
page for each staff member with information extracted from systems (1), (2), (3) and (4)
above, e.g., enabling a course coordinator to see tutor and student lists, upload exam
results, etc.
BNCC/DE Paper 13b: UWIDEC’s Information Management System
Professor Stewart Marshall, May 4, 2005
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References
Bates, T. (2004). “Technology and lifelong learning: Myths and realities”, D. Murphy, R. Carr, J.
Taylor and W. Tat-meng (eds), Distance education and technology: Issues and practice.
Hong Kong: Open University of Hong Kong Press (pp.9-30).
Dutton, W., & Loader, B. (2002). Introduction. In W. Dutton & B. Loader (Eds.), Digital academe:
The new media and institutions of higher education and learning (pp. 1-32). London:
Routledge.
Haywood, T. (2002). Defining moments: Tension between richness and reach. In W. Dutton &
B. Loader (Eds.), Digital academe: The new media and institutions of higher education and
learning (pp. 39-49). London: Routledge.
Huynh, M., Umesh, U. N., & Valacich, J. S. (2003). E-Learning as an emerging entrepreneurial
enterprise in universities and firms. Communications of the Association for Information
Systems, 12, 48-68.
Lian, A. (2000). Knowledge transfer and technology in education: Toward a complete learning
environment. Educational Technology & Society, 3(3).
Marshall, S., & Gregor, S. (2002). Distance education in the online world: Implications for higher
education. In M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), Web-based instructional learning (pp. 110-124).
Hershey, PA: IRM Press.
Orlikowski, W., & Lacono, C. S. (2001). Research commentary: Desperately seeking the IT in IT
research: A call to theorizing the IT artifact. Information Systems Research, 12(2), 121-134.
BNCC/DE Paper 13b: UWIDEC’s Information Management System
Professor Stewart Marshall, May 4, 2005