Decision support system for managing educational capacity utilization in universities

Abstract

Decision-making in the field of academic planning involves extensive analysis of large data volumes originating from multiple systems. Academic workload management is concerned with distributing teaching resources in order to adequately support the university's educational framework (faculties, degrees, courses, admission policies, teaching workload etc). We propose a methodology for assessing educational capacity and planning its distribution and utilization in universities. The approach has been implemented as a decision support system allowing simulation and evaluation of various proposals and scenarios. The system integrates the input data from relevant sources into an autonomous data warehouse, while the client front-end ensures adequate output presentation to the user so as reveal significant details and dependencies. Applying the system as an "on-the-fly" decision-support facility for the policy-makers has resulted in significant acceleration of planning procedures, raised the overall awareness with respect to the underlying methodology and, ultimately, enabled more efficient academic administration.