TITLE:
Contextual Analysis of Educational Monitoring and Progression as a Service (EMPaaS) System in Higher Education
AUTHORS:
Mohammed Ali, Trevor Wood-Harper, Abdullah Sultan Al-Gahtani
KEYWORDS:
Exploring Monitoring, Progression System, Higher Education, Multiple Perspectives, EMPaaS
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.7 No.3,
July
30,
2019
ABSTRACT: The arrival of new technologies has opened a window
of opportunity for UK higher education institutions. Although UK Higher
education (HE) has recently become a huge phenomenon owing to an increase in
students attending University, many UK universities are not investing enough in
technology to facilitate teaching, management and research practices that aim
to improve the student experience. This paper discusses the potential for an
information system solution, which can facilitate the institutional practices
in UK HEIs from multiple stakeholder perspectives. An existing system employed
at a UK University known as “MyPGR” was evaluated in order to shed some light
on the existing technical problems UK Universities are currently facing, with
the support of a soft systems approach (CATWOE). The proposed solution is the
Educational-Monitoring-and-Progression-as-a-Service (EMPaaS), which is based on
the Cloud Computing model. EMPaaS has the potential to monitor student
progression and key milestones relating to their PGR programme, in addition to
enabling students to use free cloud applications to keep track of milestones
and progressions. The highly accessible and flexible nature of cloud applications
adds to the cost-effectiveness of adopting cloud services, which in turn frees
up additional funds for UK Universities to pursue other important investments.