Conceptualizing Data Driven Decision Support Component in Academic Information Management System

Academic management decision making in academia reflects effective leadership in determining the quality of graduates. It is challenging and time-consuming effort as the decision makers must be comprehensively and accurately informed. The use of technology to develop decision support system has been proven to reduce the time-consuming problem as databases are used to promote systematic capturing and storing of data. This paper reports the conceptualization of data driven decision support component in Academic Information Management System. It is intended as a design framework for a web-based data driven decision support component for academic insights and analytics. A participatory action research strategy by which one researcher is representing the technical team and another representing process owner team focus on conceptualize the data driven decision support component. Appointed as the project team, the researchers worked together over several months for implementation of Academic Information Management System. Meetings, workshops and discussions are avenues of data gathering, analysis and reflection. The analysis and reflection contributes to a qualitatively identified data driven model of the decision support component. The data driven model emphasizes on consistency of curriculum data where curriculum management module acts as the single source of truth in providing input to other modules and the student information management system. Reflectively the accuracy of academic data insights to decision makers is directly dependent on how effective curriculum data has been captured, stored, organized and disseminated within a curriculum lifecycle.

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