DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN INTEGRATED ACADEMIC PLANNING UNIT (A CASE STUDY OF NNAMDI AZIKIWE UNIVERSITY AWKA)

ABSTRACT

Academic planning as “a sub-system provides direction and approval for matter’. The formulation of a good academic planning is only the first implementation putting the academic program plan into action. This requires that goals and objective are developed as part of the plan. The duties of the academic planning unit include; Firstly, to provide institutional planning for academic programs. Secondly, to provide a regular report to Faculty council. In order to complete this project an investigation of the academic planning unit was carried out with the aim of identifying the predominant problems in the academic planning unit, this investigation revealed many discrepancies within the system. To use improve on the efficiency of the academic planning department, to use a good database management system to respond to yawning situations, to employ the service of IT-based systems to improve on the academic planning operation. This research was done successfully but with some natural limitation confronting this study. The activities of the academic planning unit departments are manually based. This leads to inefficiency, poor response time, poor planning and execution of major activities and low productivity .as a result, an integrated software model was designed as a proposed solution to the problems identified.

Background of the Study
Integration of documentation and knowledge based computerized service in information system is a tremendous means to help management in their daily practices and to improve its quality. Ahaiwe, (2007)
With the national dividing financial budgetary allocation, nature academic planning is essential for proper channeling of our limited resources provisions for lecture rooms and office spaces seen to have been neglected for the previous years. Academics have been in chaos; student admission has been on the increase without regard to available infrastructure.

According to Ahaiwe, (2007) Available classroom spaces have insufficient desks, table and chairs. Partially due to over blown student population, examinations are difficult to conduct and examination script are not yet computerized only in first year and second years. Library facilities need to be coordinated, with all these, a good academic planning which would encompass short, median and long term planning is necessary in the institution. For this purpose, an academic planning unit is one word for proper articulation of academic activities. Therefore, it is hoped that the design and implementation of an integrated software suite for academic planning unit would provide a flexible and reliable management of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka. Anigbogu, (2000)

1.2 Statement of the Problem
It is observed that most of its records in academic planning unit are handled manually. The problems associated with the manual method include inefficiency, poor response times, poor planning and execution of major activities and low productivity.

1.3 Aim and Objective of the Study
The objectives of the new system are as follows
• To improve on the efficiency of the academic planning department
• To improve good database management system to respond to yawning situations
• To employ the service of IT-based systems to improve on the academic planning operation
• To provide a total computer based solution.

1.4 Research Questions
The design and implementation of integrated academic planning unit has been a controversial issue especially in managing a school.
In view of this, the researcher intends to present the following questions:
1. How significant is the integrated academic software suite help in keeping the records and reports of staff for easy retrieval with increased data security?
2. How effective does integrated academic software suit helps to attend to many staff without being over worked?
3. To what capacity does the implementation of integrated academic software suit help the school personnel to attend to many students without being over worked?