Success Story

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Key Benefits

• Enables personalization for the individual needs of students while still maintaining a consistent set of forms and standards
• Generates, updates, and maintains a dynamic application to provide teachers with more resources
• Provides clear, accurate, and current financial information
• Allows remote access to systems via an e-learning system - now offering distance learning, an important feature for Russia's remote regions

Sybase Technology

• Adaptive Server Enterprise
• Sybase IQ
• Power Designer
• PowerBuilder

Industry

• Education

Creating a Modern University
The Russian Economic Academy of G.V Plekhanov began a large-scale IT project with the goal of modernizing the entire university. The first requirement of the new system was the need to support the module-based structure of recommended educational programs. Second, the system needed to incorporate a complex scale in assessing the quality of education. Once integrated, this scale would be used as the basis for the education and curriculum development process to reflect global educational standards.

The introduction of the University Education Process Control (UEPC) system renovated the information-delivery infrastructure, resulting in an improvement in the overall quality of management for the educational institute. The new system, with a common information platform, creates unity throughout the university's data systems, and reduces the employee workload by improving communications and speeding up processes - enabling them to be more efficient.

A Common Data Structure and Data Sharing
The Academy's IT group understood that in order for the project to be a success, it needed a common data management framework in all departments throughout the university. The challenge lay in assimilating a variety of data and toolsets - one for each department. Sybase was selected as the foundation for this new data management technology because it is scalable -it could be built to fit the needs of each of the Academy's departments, while providing a common foundation.

The UEPC system provides the capability to personalize individual study plans, and automatically compiles these into a common reporting template. This feature allows the Academy to be aware of and attend to the needs of every student while still maintaining a consistent set of forms and standards. To manage the varied instructional materials, the system automatically generates, updates, and maintains a dynamic Teaching Context application. This aggregates, collates and, ultimately, enriches the teachers' available resources to give them more freedom to implement successful teaching strategies. This system provides a fundamental base for all Academy efforts and serves to raise the institution's standards. Victor Romanov, CIO, explains, "The ability to define and tailor student curricula and manage instruction materials efficiently are key elements to a successful educational facility."

In addition to the benefits to the students and teachers, the UEPC system also improves back-office functions. A common data structure, offering insights across the Academy, replaced manual efforts and a lack of data sharing. Clear, accurate, and current financial information flows inside the university, making financial oversight easier to maintain and enabling smarter business decisions. This improves the effectiveness of distributing financial and technical resources while ensuring that the university increases profitability. Broadly impacting the teacher and student constituencies, the system also impacts the human resources department by reducing manual paperwork.

Extending the System to Enable e-Learning
The final piece of the project extends the information system to the Web. The integration of the UEPC project with the Academy's Web server allows remote access to systems, and supports the e-learning system. The Academy now offers rich curriculum content and student personalization via distance learning - a key factor for Russia's remote regions.

Given the vastness of the region the Academy serves, the e-learning system is the most reasonable and effective means of education for students located far from the Academy. With more than 10,000 students, 200 teachers, doctors of philosophy, professors, assistant professors, and senior lecturers, including 2,100 students in nine branches including Uzbekistan and Mongolia, the e-learning system enables the Academy to maintain high standards despite its rapid expansion both in terms of geography, and in staff and students.

Alleviating Everyday Problems
An important aspect of the UEPC system is that it facilitates daily employee activities such as collecting data, preparing reports, analyzing information, and managing the business-side of the Academy using both collected and stored data. Administrative personnel can now prepare statistical reports on demand, providing invaluable insights into operations.

In addition, the system changed the curriculum-building processes. Previously this task required extensive efforts compiling timetables, arranging groups of students, and locating appropriate rooms for classes. Now with the new system, these functions are completed automatically and quickly.

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