UNICAP: Efficient Decision Support for Academic Resource and Capacity Management Svetlana Vinnik, University of Konstanz (Germany) TED Conference on e-Government

UNICAP: Efficient Decision Support for Academic Resource and Capacity

ManagementSvetlana Vinnik, University of Konstanz (Germany)

TED Conference on e-Government

Electronic democracy: The challenge ahead

March 2–4, 2005 ♦ Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 2

Outline

Motivation Task Definition Basic Concepts Methodology UNICAP as an Interactive System System Architecture Designing the User Interface Conclusions

March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 3

Motivation

Example The Faculties of Biology and Computer

Science are setting up a new interdisciplinary Master’s Degree in Bioinformatics with 30 beginners per year.

Check if this plan can be supported with the available teaching resources.

- Motivation- Task Definition- Basic Concepts- Methodology- UNICAP as an Interactive System- System Architecture- Designing the User Interface- Conclusions

March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 4

Motivation

Problem: Annual academic planning (course structure and admission numbers)

Input parameters: Available teaching resources Current resource utilization Staff categories, teaching obligations Student numbers, ex-matriculation and retention rates Course curricula, course attendance Quality requirements

Complications Input data is scattered over multiple systems The input data is „dirty“ (i.e., incomplete,

inconsistent) No established computational model Assumptions might aggravate forecast reliability


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 5

Task Definition

Considerations: Errors are expensive! Wrong admission numbers -> long-term

misbalance!

Desired solution Decision Support System (DSS) Simulation of various strategies „On-the fly“ evaluation of generated plans Ease of application, interactive mode High explanatory power Autonomous Data Management Multi-user mode, differenciated access rights

Goal“dirty” data “clean” forecast


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 6

Basic Concepts

Faculty A Faculty B Faculty N

teaching staff

teaching staff

teaching staff

teachingobligation

teachingobligation

teachingobligation

courses

courses

courses

degrees

degrees

degrees

students

…


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 7

Basic Concepts

The underlying principle of the approach: supply-demand equilibrium:

Supply: The volume of academic services offered by

the teaching staff Demand:

The volume of academic services consumed by the students

Measurement units SPW (Semester periods per week) per

student

for each faculty fSupplyf = Demandf


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 8

Methodology

Annual admission capacity per faculty max. number of beginners the faculty‘s programs

can accomodate derived from the resources released due ex-

matriculation and retention of students Part of the released resources will be needed for

servicing non-supervised students:

Expected exports depend on the admission capacity of other faculties cannot be computed in advance!

Solution: system of equations for all faculties

Supplyf = Demandown + Demandforeign


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 9

Methodology

What is the cost of educating a student?

Curricular value (CV) of a course: per-student cost of attending a course

Curricular value of a program = sum of curricular values of all courses specified by the program‘s curriculum

Parts of single faculties in the curricular value are called curricular quotas (CQ)

sem course faculty CV

1st

Introduction into CSOperating systemsMaths for Programmer…

Comp. Sc.Comp. Sc.Math.

0.040.020.08

2ndAlgorithms & Data StructuresStatistics…

Comp. Sc.Statistics

0.040.02

3rdInformation SystemsInformation Management…

Comp. Sc.Comp. Sc.

0.030.03

…

6th

Practical TrainingSeminarExternal block

…

Comp. Sc.Comp. Sc.LawEconomicsPolitics…

0.10.2

0.030.030.03

Total Curricular Value 2.4


sem course faculty CVIntroduction into CSOperating systemsAlgorithms & Data StructuresInformation SystemsInformation ManagementPractical TrainingSeminar…

Total

Comp. Sc.

0.040.020.040.030.030.10.2…

1.94

Statistics…

TotalStatistics

0.02…

0.06Maths for Programmer…

TotalMath.

0.08…

0.22

…

Total Curricular Value 2.4

March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 10

Methodology

What is the cost of educating a student? Construct the cross-faculty curricular

relationship matrix:

faculties as columns

study programs as rows

cell [i,j] as faculty‘s j contribution in program i


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 11

Methodology


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 12

Methodology

Number of beginners in program i is a portion of the admission capacity of its supervising faculty k:

N faculties -> N unknowns -> N equations -> solvable!

Demandij = CVi

j * #Beginnersi

Demandij = CVi

j * qik * #Beginnersk


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 13

UNICAP as an Interactive System

Course of user interaction:- Motivation- Task Definition- Basic Concepts- Methodology- UNICAP as an Interactive System- System Architecture- Designing the User Interface- Conclusions

March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 14

System Architecture

Web-enabled client/server solution with database back-end

Platform: Linux SuSE 8.2Webserver: Apache2 with

PHP 4 and OpenSSL Database: MySQL 4.1.0


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 15

System Architecture

Input data is stored in relational tables:- Motivation- Task Definition- Basic Concepts- Methodology- UNICAP as an Interactive System- System Architecture- Designing the User Interface- Conclusions

March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 16

Designing the User Interface

Website front-end easily accessible through any webbrowser

optimized for various browsers and resolutions

visual aids, interactive elements, hints and warnings

„catching“ internal errors and exceptions (MySQL, php messages) and displaying helpful messages and hints instead

conform structure and layout for each webpage

User-friendly administration and monitoring of the system via administrator‘s web front-end


March, 4 2005 TCGOV 2005 17

Conclusions

Analysis of university‘s admission capacity and resource utilization is crucial for strategic planning

Methodology for academic capacity utilization has been introduced

The approach has been implemented in a DSS called UNICAP (University‘s Capacity Planning)

Tuning parameters and simulation options ensure flexibility and adjustability of the model

Interactive user interface facilitates the decision-making

The model may be extended to handle related problems

The accumulated data may be of interest for other applications


Documents

UNICAP: Efficient Decision Support for Academic Resource and Capacity Management Svetlana Vinnik, University of Konstanz (Germany) TED Conference on e-Government