UNICAP: Efficient Decision Support for Academic Resource and Capacity Management

1. TED Conference on e-Government Electronic democracy: The challenge ahead March 2–4, 2005    ♦    Bozen-Bolzano, Italy UNICAP: Efficient Decision Support for Academic Resource and Capacity Management Svetlana Vinnik, University of Konstanz (Germany)

2. Outline • Motivation • Task Definition • Basic Concepts • Methodology • UNICAP as an Interactive System • System Architecture • Designing the User Interface • Conclusions TCGOV 2005

3. Motivation - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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. TCGOV 2005

4. Motivation - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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 TCGOV 2005

5. Task Definition - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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 TCGOV 2005

6. courses degrees degrees degrees students Basic Concepts - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions Faculty A Faculty B Faculty N teaching staff teaching staff teaching staff … teaching obligation teaching obligation teaching obligation courses courses TCGOV 2005

7. Basic Concepts - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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 f Supplyf = Demandf TCGOV 2005

8. Methodology - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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 TCGOV 2005

9. Methodology - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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) TCGOV 2005

10. Methodology - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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 TCGOV 2005

11. Methodology - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions TCGOV 2005

12. Methodology - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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 = CVij * #Beginnersi Demandij = CVij * qik * #Beginnersk TCGOV 2005

13. UNICAP as an Interactive System - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • Course of user interaction: TCGOV 2005

14. System Architecture - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • Web-enabled client/server solution with database back-end Platform: Linux SuSE 8.2 Webserver: Apache2 with PHP 4 and OpenSSLDatabase: MySQL 4.1.0 TCGOV 2005

15. System Architecture - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • Input data is stored in relational tables: TCGOV 2005

16. Designing the User Interface - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - Conclusions • 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 TCGOV 2005

17. Conclusions - Motivation - Task Definition - Basic Concepts - Methodology - UNICAP as an Interactive System - System Architecture - Designing the User Interface - 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 TCGOV 2005