E-ACADEMIN: A WEB BASED APPLICATION FOR RE-ENGINEERING ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATION

ABSTRACT

Most organizations are deploying e-business solutions because of its numerous advantages, such as, increased productivity, reduced transactions costs, wider coverage and increased speed to market. The present academic offices in developing countries still use paper-based approach for most of their activities. Data and information are logged into files, folders and excel sheets which are printed, bound and saved into drawers that are rarely used again for other purposes. In the universities, a lot of time is spent in manual computation of results, production of transcripts and reference letters for students. In this research, the issues and challenges of deploying e-business technology were reviewed and an e-business software, e-Academin for transforming traditional academic administrative processes into an online academic administration is developed. The use of e-Academin will facilitate a clean desk policy implementation, ensure e- management computation of examination results, enhance process improvement in both record keeping and administration and re-engineer the entire business processes in an academic environment. The web-based e-Academin was developed using Visual Studio.Net framework and other relevant e-business tools. The e-Academin used the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Federal University of Technology Owerri, as a case study. It can easily be loaded with other departments’ data. On testing, user stakeholders found e-Academin to be user friendly.

Key Words: Academic Administrator; E-business; Information and Communication Technology (ICT); Internet; Paper-based Office; Paperless office; Re-engineer; Software Development; Web Based; Visual Studio.NET