The Hindu : New Delhi News : A step forward in e-administration

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Sunday, Jun 25, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

A step forward in e-administration

Mandira Nayar

All information about DU students to be kept and accessed electronically

NEW DELHI: Delhi University is all set to introduce a new student administration system soon. Making it easier for colleges to keep track of their students, the system will bring down the amount of paper work meticulously kept on each student and store all these details electronically.

An attempt to reduce the burden on teachers -- bogged down with endless calculations of internal assessment marks, attendance records and house-marks for each student -- this computerised system will make all this much easier. The system has been designed by the Delhi University Computer Centre, which successfully implemented an electronic admission process for the School of Open Learning last year.

"The system has been born out of the reforms that the Examination Reforms Committee had recommended, which wanted to make things more student and teacher friendly. The problem, it was felt, was flow of information from colleges to the University and then back. There is a lot of bookkeeping to do. This system simplifies the process and allows the information to be kept and accessed electronically,'' says Delhi University Computer Centre Director Shobhit Mahajan.

While teachers will still have to maintain their attendance registers, all the information about the marks will have to just be punched in at the college office and all the calculations will be made by the computer. Simple to operate, this programme can be used in the most primitive computers and does not require the person using it to be highly computer-literate.

"The whole book-keeping process that teachers have to do will be reduced by this system. It is really very simple and does not make huge demands on either the software or hardware. It is also uniform, so that every college in the University uses the same system,'' said Prof. Mahajan.

With drop-down options, the system stores all the basic information on the student from address and date of birth to the course opted for. It also generates an enrolment number for each student automatically, which was earlier usually done manually.

"A thick pile of paper was sent from each college to the Registrar's Office on the North Campus and then an enrolment number was allotted to each student. These were then sent back to the college,'' points out Prof. Mahajan.

Apart from storing information on the student, the system also allows the University to have an electronic database of details on its teachers. These details range from e-mail addresses to the posts that the teacher has held or the number of times he or she set the University examination paper.

The system is also capable of generating reports on the performance of students in a particular class or a test. A small step that will go a long way, it is only the beginning of the technological innovations planned at the University.

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