Computer-aided assignment system : an alternative way for the department head to make better assignment decisions
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to automate the procedures used to assign instructors to the classes in a university academic department. The expectations of this new system are based upon:the need to use as much information as possible in order to make the "best" decision according to obvious factsthe new assignment policy will require rather a large amount of information, but if not automated, it will be time and effort consuming, if not impossibleTo make this computerized system a sound and practical educational achievement, there is a need to work in detail with the educational and philosophical basis of the teacher course assignment. In other words, the purpose of this paper is not just to design a computerized system, but to present many advantages which prove its ability to serve this purpose, and to open a new path toward progressive education.The approach to use a computerized system calls for translating the information of the assignment into numerical values. The numerical values of each component would be added resulting in total earned points each instructor has earned in a certain course.Using the accumulative points technique, there will be two different files:An Instructor's File; which holds a record for every instructor, containing information about him or her and also information about the selected courses which are sorted by their cumulative points. This file is sorted by the instructor's number.A Course File; which holds a record for every course selected by the faculty and which contains information about the course and those instructors who selected it, sorted by their cumulative points. The Course File is sorted by department, course number and course section.A third file will be developed after the previous two files have been created. This file will contain records of the scheduled courses which no one has selected. It will be sorted by department number, course number and course section.Having those three files available interactively for the head of the department will lead him/her to a better decision-making environment. The department head will use this information to supply an Final Assignment File which will contain the final selections and assignments. This file will be sorted by the instructor's number and will be useful as a substitute for the current manual communications between the departments and the central administration. In case if any of the assigned faculty cannot fulfill his/her assignment, the department head can use the same files to modify the Instructor-Assignment File.This paper will present a concept of student evaluation of instructors and how this is used optionally in the system. It will concentrate on using the instructors, desires and experiences due to the fact that the current student evaluation techniques have to be revised, and changed by its own expertise, to suite the requirements of a total automated, and integrated system, and also to enforce its use in each department. Many people interviewed thought that it would be more flexible and practical if it were left to the head of the department to decide whether to use student evaluations or not.