Educational management systems and the tutorial class

Abstract

Recent research by the authors has shown that University administrative systems are not designed with a view for use in the direct educational process. To attempt to discover the mechanisms for this failure in IT systems an indepth case study was conducted. The study involved an extremely well documented University administrative system, intended to support the tutorial classroom, called the Administrative Management System (AMS). Based on a well known Peoplesoft product the implementation and developn~ent of the system allowed a study of the dynamics within the educational institution. It was found that the vision of IT support for the classroom has not been achieved and that the process of developing a large system for the University involved steps that would, almost inevitably, lead to an emphasis on data gathering rather than relevant reporting. © 2005 by International Federation for Information Processing.