Developing an Online Student Enrolment System for ABC University

Task

Task:

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 labourintensive, 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).