Consider your school, how do you know that the life cycle was developed specifically for the university. How do we know it meets our needs?
In the University of Southeastern Philippines, there are plenty of strategies that was been implemented to aid the needs of its students, faculty and staff on its daily or timed routines. Routines can be considered as transactions which anyone deals with it, a step by step process just like making deposits on the bank, software installation and etc.
In the University of Southeastern Philippines, I could mention two transactions that has big impact to students, professors and staffs of the university, first is the online grade enquiry which enables the student to view its grades from its subjects taken from the previous semesters via online. The second is the enrollment system of the university which every student should deal every semester for the whole student’s residence in the university. Since these two systems that were implemented in the university made great impact especially on the students of the university so I will stick on these two systems.
So how do we know that these systems meet the needs of the university especially to us, the students of one of the prestige universities in the here in the Philippines?
Before I will try to answer that, let us try to know why there are systems like online grade enquiry and our enrollment system present in our university. Systems in information technology based on my own understanding, is the one of the output solutions for the problems that exist which can be solved through the use of technology for technology itself makes our life easier. Also, systems only exist if there are problems based on what I have learned from our previous assignments. The system aids the processes on the life cycle through its operation by faster data redistribution, consistent data storing, up-to-date information feeds.
As to what I have notice and in my opinion, the online grade enquiry was developed to help students in the way that the student could view their grades on their subjects online aside on what was written on their passbooks and in order to be sure that the student has their grades on the registrar whether the student passed or failed its subject. Based on my friend’s experience named Erwin Adesna which is also a student in USEP taking up IT, “kamuntik na siyang di ga-graduate ngayong darating na marso dahil mayroon siyang asignatora na bagsak ang nakalagay sa kanyang record sa registrar na na pansin lamang niya nung magcomply na siya ng mga papeles para sa graduation pero pasado naman ang nakalagay sa kanyang passbook at ang nakasama pa nun ay tapos na ang adding at dropping, so d na niya maa-add ang asignatora pero buti nalang pinayagan pa siya ng registrar”. Putting yourself in the scenario, you’re about to graduate especially in the Institute of Computing and it will be postponed just because of one of your subjects, isn’t it troublesome? You will spend at least another 6 months of residence in the university in order to take and pass the subject, another 6 months of seeing sir randy’s face but at least compared to the first this one could be better.
The system helps improved the cycle of enquiring grades in USEP as it should be in my opinion. By having the enquiring of grades online, it creates a new and more convenient way of accessing the student’s grades. It cuts the hassle and expense of the student on acquiring their grades. Before, in order for the student to know their grades on all of the subjects they have taken, they will ask for a certificate of grades in which the student will have to pay for it and wait for at least two weeks before the student can get it and if the student will just want to review its grades and nothing less to do with the certificate of grades, it will be a waste of money and time. So with the system implemented, it reduces the hassle and expense especially when the student would frequently online, the student will just access the site then enters the student’s information and in just few minutes the system will display the student’s grades. Also USEP is a state university, students in this university are “skolar ng bayan” – mahihirap pero matatalino. Most of the students have their allowance good enough to eat 3 times a day, 7 times a week. So let’s do arithmetic, if the student has an allowance of 100 pesos per day then we divide it by 3 equals 33.33 which is its budget for every meal good for 1 day but the student needs to know all of its grades, so he or she will pay for not less than 50 pesos for the certificate plus 20 pesos for the mail stamp, in result he or she will have to sacrifice 2 meals just to have its list of grades or just used the free internet in the university and browse its grades online which is convenient in terms of time and money, his or her allowance for food will not be sacrifices.
This system fits on to the university because as to what I have notice, the final grades that was passed by the professors to the registrar was not distributed every end of the semester to the students. Maybe in my opinion, in the sense that the students will go to their the professors in order to get their grades on the subject the professor have handled and write it on the student’s passbook, their it will be no means for sending the final record of grades to the student because it will be redundant. But this method creates problems when it comes to the reliability of the grades that are in the passbook because just like on Erwin’s case, his grade in his philosophy subject was marked as passed but in the registrars records is failed and the registrar’s record will be followed and not on what was written on the student’s passbook for it may be tampered or falsified. Also, the hard thing that happens is that his professor on that subject has already retired, so he cannot appeal his case to his professor.
It is undeniable that some but not all professors in USEP especially during the end of the semester are very hard to find in their office, maybe because the students were after them to submit their late projects or ask for their grades or to make “pakiusap” – alam na kung anu ang ipapakiusap (HeHeHe). In relation to the scholarship renewal of some scholarship grants on the university, one the requirements is that there will be no “BAGSAK” on the subjects that the student took during the current semester so the list of grades is needed as proof. So instead of hunting for their professors to get their grades, if the professors have submitted all of its student’s grades to the registrar since the system were integrated to the database used by the registrar, the student can now create a printable file and have it verified. These was been told by my board mate which is a nograles scholar when he was to renew his scholarship.
So how do we know that it meets our needs as students in USEP? Well, new cycle that was created with the use of the grade enquiring system serves as an intermediate solution to the current grade enquiry process in the university. It reduces the effort in both the students the staff on the registrar during enquiring and providing list of grades. It is our need to know our grades and the new cycle overrides the old cycle of acquiring student grades by providing that needs of us in much faster and convenient way with the use of internet.
The second one is enrollment system of the University of Southeastern Philippines. This meets the needs of everyone (basically) that wants to have quality education, to be passed on the admission test set by the university and to be enrolled in the university. And to be able to be officially enrolled in USEP one must have unwavering patients and perseverance or else one cannot be officially enrolled. So let’s trace up what are the processes one should take. First, before the official enrollment schedule arrives the university posts its information materials about the enrollment process in order for those who are new in the university to know. The need to know. Hmm, checked! It is a good thing that information should be delivered ahead of time for everyone to know and to be prepared – requirements. When we talk about requirements, if the student is not new in the university, the student should secure student clearance which is a requirement for getting Pre-Registration Form aside from other miscellaneous receipts. No fuss if the student has no balance on its tuition fee and if the student’s library card was validated, its clearance will be signed immediately. After the student has its clearance cleared and has the other requirements, he or she will be given the PRF to write his or her subjects to be enrolled. Also, advising in Institute of Computing was separated by year level and has its schedule and assigned professor to conduct advising. By processing the advising in this way, it reduces the waiting time for every student and to distribute the work load the faculty evenly. During the enrollment period on USEP, time is the most critical aspect of it, so in every step throughout the enrollment, the student should utilize each time he or she has in order to be officially enrolled. Actually there are no problems with regards to the processes on the college offices, only when it comes to the payments and the submission of the requirements on the registrar. The queuing system that was implemented on the cashier and to the registrar was specific to USEP – worst. Even though different strategies that were implemented on the previous part of the enrollment process on USEP, the latter part (on the cashier and on the registrar) makes it all useless. Actually, the registrar tries the queuing system that every student that has transaction on the registrar will be given priority number but that never went well and only makes the transaction processes in the registrar difficult due to those will rush into the window because their number is up yet they are not around and then ask to be entertained. But despite of that, I appreciate the system that was implemented because there are no repetitions on every transactions phase – straight forward, di bali nalang kung tatatanga-tanga ang studyante like his or her temporary enrollment form doesn’t have the encoders signature on it. Before the cashier or the bookkeeper would accept the temporary enrollment form he or she should go back to his or her college to affix the encoder’s signature on the temporary enrollment form. This life cycle that was on the enrollment system in USEP is the same as the waterfall model in system development. Each process throughout the life cycle should be done sequentially in order to proceed to the next step because for every step produce results that are needed to the next step.
Conclusion
Different problems require specific solutions. We could say that cycles or processes are especially developed for the university if there are problems that are unique and not related to each other and are dealt accordingly though the cycle which a solution could be an automation of certain transactions like in the enrollment process on the university like propagation of enrollment forms through electronic media which happens after encoding of the students subjects on the college office. In this way, the students don’t have to carry extra sheets of paper to the cashier of to the registrar. Or it could be still manual like by assigning every college into a designated window in order focus the personnel on the specific college and be able to advice the student or the group if there are possible problems on their enrollment transactions. For example, a group of 1st year computer science students would want to open the subject programming 1 on the second semester of this school year but they still don’t have a professor, so the registrar could ask those who fall in line in his or her window who are those students that are included on the reopened subject and could tell them at once that they still don’t have a professor so they should provide it first. Or a major subject on that course was already closed, the window attendant could ask for those students that fall in line in his or her window who are those students that will enroll that subject and tell them at once that the subject was already close. The life cycle of the enrollment system on USEP in general works okay if we will just stick on it main objective – to conduct the enrollment process and to produce results, but through the process there are aspects (human) that would cause problem’s which are not predicted during its analysis and design phase. Like attitude on the students, even to yourself you cannot keep your patients if you are falling on line that reaches to the second floor.
On the grade enquiry cycle, the one that is implemented on USEP specifies on the necessity of the USEPians to access his or her grades anytime especially during the end of the semester unlike to other schools in which their grades are sent in their home address via letter. Also, the parents of those students that was on the province could access the site since it is a web-base and then verify any time if ever their son or daughter is really goes to school by checking theirs son or daughter’s grade and the last time their son or daughter have enrolled because once my board mate told me that his classmate’s board mate doesn’t go to school for almost 3 years but still pretends to his family that he went here in Davao to study provided with tuition and monthly allowance. With this system implemented, it would be beneficial not only to the students but also to the parents as well.
In the sense that through the development of the system and other components that it supports or supports it has undergone, if it is properly planned and analyze, there is no way for the system and its components not able to meet the needs of the end users. Just like an ice cube, it won’t formed into a circle after the water is purred into the “humalhan” that is cube shaped. Eventually, the system and its processes should fit as to what is designed for and will meet the requirements set by the problem sets and the end users or else it would be useless and instead of providing help to the end users thus it will result into much greater problem than the establishment had before.
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