Online Student Enrolment System At ABC University

Current Enrolment System and Need for new System

In response to the issues raised in the ‘online university enrolment system’ case study provided,identify the functional and non-functional requirement for an online enrolment system and build anddocument a set of use cases for that system.

1. Please read the attached MIS605_ Assessment 1_Case Study. Note that every piece of information provided in the following case serves a purpose.

2. Once you have completed reading the case study.

Please answer the following questions: 1.

(a) Who are the stakeholders in this project? Please list at least four stakeholders. (2 marks)

(b) Who are the Actors in this System? Please list at least four actors (4 mark)

2.

Identify and list at least TEN (10) major functional requirements for the System. (20 marks)

3.

Using your own experience with similar online student enrolment systems and the information provided in the case study, identify and list at least FIVE (5) non-functional requirements for theSystem. Explain and justify each non-functional requirement.

4.

Using your own experience with similar online student enrolment systems and the information provided in the case study, build a comprehensive set of use case diagrams for the System using MSVisio.

Please note that the case study has not and does not intend to provide a comprehensive description of requirements for the System. This means that you are required to use your own experience with information systems in general and online student enrolment systems in particular to develop this set of use case diagrams. For example, would Student Enrolment Officers be required to log into the System before performing any tasks?

Online Student Enrolment System at ABC University

ABC University (ABCU) is seeking to develop an online student enrolment system (the System) whereby the students would be able to enrol themselves into eligible subjects at the beginning of each trimester and pay their tuition fees online. You have been hired as the Business Analyst for this project.

Founded in Sydney in 2013, ABCU has experienced a remarkable growth in student numbers in recent years and has opened new campuses in three other Australian cities including Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. ABCU currently has 50,000 students across their four campuses with an estimated 5000 student in-take in each trimester. This phenomenal growth in their student numbers has necessitated the need for an online student enrolment system. Once developed, this system will replace the manual enrolment process that is currently in place. The current manual enrolment process is labour-intensive, error-prone, and rather inefficient as it requires the Student Enrolment Officers to manually enrol each student into the subjects upon the receipt of a study plan from the students.

The Pro Vice Chancellor (Learning and Teaching) envisage an online student enrolment system which would allow students to complete their enrolments and tuition fee payments before the Census date. The System should not only enable Student Enrolment Officers of each School to create, edit and remove Courses offered by their School but also to create, edit and remove core subjects and electives offered in each course. The students should be able to access the system through a device of their choice (e.g. desktop web browser, mobile phone or tablet app).

Most subjects would have pre-requisites that must be satisfied before the students are eligible to enrol in the subject. It would be the responsibility of the Program Directors to provide and update the relevant course and subject information including the descriptor, availability (i.e. whether a subject or a course is offered in a certain trimester) and the prerequisites.

The Timetabling Officers may also create, edit and remove timetables for each available Subject through the new System. Each campus will hold multiple classes for the same subject. A Subject is offered in the form of classes. Each campus may offer multiple classes for the same Subject.

Once logged into the System, students should be able to view all the available subjects, enrol in and drop subjects. The System will detect timetable clashes and prevent students from enrolling into subjects that clash.

The System should not let students to enrol in too many or few subjects unless they have an increased or reduced study load approved by the Student Enrolment Officer. Once the enrolment has been completed the system will generate a timetable customised to each individual student outlining the class times and locations. The System will then prompt the students to pay their tuition fees through a secure payment process.

The System should be able to send email reminders to students who have not completed the enrolment process by a designated deadline. It should also allow the Student Enrolment Officers and Program Directors to generate customized reports (e.g. a report showing a total number of students enrolled in a particular subject or a course).

The automated information systems are essential in the current times to make sure that the accuracy and speed of the business functions and operations is always improved. These information systems are being implemented in all of the business sectors and education is one of such sectors. The organization that has decided to make effective use of technology is ABC University (ABCU). The university is seeking to develop an automated online student enrolment system that will allow the students to enrol themselves using the online system. There will be numerous other benefits that will be offered by this system to the Project Director, Time-Table Officer, and Student Enrolment Officer.

The development of the online student enrolment system will have a number of steps that will be essential to execute the project and achieve the respective goals. One of the crucial steps will be system analysis and design. The analysis of the system will be essential to be effectively done so that the rest of the system development stages are executed properly. The report is written for the online student enrolment system and it includes the system analysis details for effective system development.

• Project Sponsor: The decision to develop and implement the online student enrolment system has been taken by ABC University (ABCU). The university is the sponsor of the project and the project client. The stakeholder will have high degree of interest and involvement in the project. The contribution will also be significant and it will come in the form of funds and implementation of the requirements (Eskerod, Huemann & Ringhofer, 2015).
• System End-Users: The online student enrolment system will be used by the student and the Project Director along with the Student Enrolment and Time-Table Officer. The system users will provide their expectations and requirements from the system during the system elicitation techniques. The usage of the system and the feedback will also be provided by the stakeholder group.
• Parents & Families of the Students: The ease of the student enrolments will have a positive impact on the parents and the family members of the existing and the potential students of the university. The group will be crucial from the aspect of the system success among the users.
• Project Resources: The project will be headed by the Project Manager. There will also be numerous other resources of varied skill sets, such as system designer, system developer, network specialist, etc. that will be involved. These entities will make sure that the system development is done as per the expectations. The group will have significant stake in the project (Ponnappa, 2014).  

• Student: The system that is being developed is the online student enrolment system. Therefore, the students will be the major actors involved in the system. The students will make use of the automated system to enrol themselves in the specific courses offered by the university. They may also make changes in the existing enrolments that they may be associated with.
• Project Director: There may be certain changes that may be required to be made to the subject offered by the university. These changes could be in terms of the course structure, contents, or others. The only actor that will have the authority to make such changes will be the Project Director.
• Student Enrolment Officer: The actor will be able to make changes and will be responsible for the management of the courses on the system. The actor will be able to perform the activities as add course, update course, and delete course on the system.
• Time-Table Officer: Every course and subject will have specific timetable attached to it. The actor will be able to make changes in the existing timetable. The actor will also be able to modify or delete the timetable from the system.

• Login functionality to the users with four categories of the users to select from the user type dropdown:
  • Student
  • Project Director
  • Time-Table Officer
  • Student Enrolment Officer
• Enrol functionality for the students so that they may enrol in the desired course through the system.
• View functionality and capability to the student so that the listing of all the subjects is done on the system for the student to take a look on the associated subject details.
• Drop subject functionality so that the student may opt out from the subject that the student may be already enrolled in.
• The Project Director shall be able to make changes in the subject in terms of the modifications in the subject structure or contents (FanJiang & Syu, 2014).
• Add timetable functionality to the Time Table Officer so that a timetable is added to the specific course
• Modify timetable functionality to the Time Table Officer so that the modifications are made in the existing timetable of the subject
• Delete timetable functionality to the Time Table Officer so that the existing timetable attached with a subject can be deleted.
• Add course functionality to the Student Enrolment Officer so that the new course and its details can be added to the system.
• Delete course functionality to the Student Enrolment Officer so that the existing course details can be deleted from the system.
• Update course functionality to the Student Enrolment Officer so that the course details can be updated on the system.

System Availability 

The development of the online student enrolment system is being done for ABCU so that the students can easily enrol themselves in the desired subjects and courses as per the expectations and requirements. The availability of the system shall be included as one of the essential requirements to make sure that the students and the other entire three user types can access the system at any time.

System Security 

The online student enrolment system will have a lot of data stored and processed through the system, such as the enrolment and demographic details of the students, subject & course timetables, subject details, financial information of the students, and a lot more. A large amount of this data will be private and confidential and it will be necessary to maintain these data properties. Also, the publically available system data, such as subject and course details will require protection at the time of processing. Security will be a major non-functional requirement attached to the system to make sure that all of the data properties are preserved (Thakurta, 2013).  

System Usability

There are four different user types that are associated with the system as student, time table officer, project director, and student enrolment officer. Each of these four user types will have their own expectations and requirements from the system. It will be essential that these specific expectations and requirements are fulfilled. It will also be necessary that the overall usability of the system is achieved in terms of the inclusion of the functional aspects along with the ease of usage of the system.  

Reliability 

Reliability is the non-functional requirement of the system that makes sure that the system consistently performs without any lags or failure. The software system is exposed to a wide range of failures. The online student enrolment system shall have the ability to avoid these failures and maintain immunity towards the same. It must also be ensured that the system provides the valid and updated information to all the users at all the times. For example, the time table officer may make some changes in the course timetable. This may have clashes with the student enrolment in terms of the existing and new set of enrolment. The system shall make decisions on the basis of the updated information and shall provide the respective response to the user.  

System Flexibility 

The flexibility of the system shall be supported in the software to make sure that the system can adapt to varied sets of environments and platforms. The system shall be developed once and the users shall be able to access the system on different platforms and environments.  

The use case diagram for the online student enrolment system is plotted in the image below. The system has four actors as the student, project director, time table officer, and student enrolment officer. These actors will perform specific activities on the system. The use case diagram for the online student enrolment system is plotted in the image below to represent the details of the system actors and the specific activities associated with these actors (Arora & Bhatia, 2018).

Use Case 1

Conclusion 

There are different stages and phases that are involved in every system development process. Every phase has its own relevance for the overall development process. It is crucial that the due attention is paid to each of these phases. The online student enrolment system is also a project in which system analysis will play an important role to determine the system requirements and behaviour. The numerous project decisions will be based on the results and outcomes of the analysis phase.

References

Arora, P., & Bhatia, R. (2018). Agent-Based Regression Test Case Generation using Class Diagram, Use cases and Activity Diagram. Procedia Computer Science, 125, 747-753. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2017.12.096

Eskerod, P., Huemann, M., & Ringhofer, C. (2015). Stakeholder Inclusiveness: Enriching Project Management with General Stakeholder Theory1. Project Management Journal, 46(6), 42-53. doi: 10.1002/pmj.21546

FanJiang, Y., & Syu, Y. (2014). Semantic-based automatic service composition with functional and non-functional requirements in design time: A genetic algorithm approach. Information And Software Technology, 56(3), 352-373. doi: 10.1016/j.infsof.2013.12.001

Fedaghi, S. (2014). Information system requirements: a flow-based diagram versus supplementation of use case narratives with activity diagrams. International Journal Of Business Information Systems, 17(3), 306. doi: 10.1504/ijbis.2014.064975

Ponnappa, G. (2014). Project Stakeholder Management. Project Management Journal, 45(2), e3-e3. doi: 10.1002/pmj.21400

Thakurta, R. (2013). A value-based approach to prioritise non-functional requirements during software project development. International Journal Of Business Information Systems, 12(4), 363. doi: 10.1504/ijbis.2013.053213