By Jane Namugula
In another advancement toward the achievement of efficiency in business operations, Makerere University is adopting new systems of automating timetables and tracking student attendance. The initiatives were unveiled during the recent CHUSS retreat at Nican Resort on November 1-2, 2024.
Speaking to the delegates, the Director of Quality Assurance, Dr. Cyprian Misinde said that the university plans to introduce an enhanced Student Attendance Management System (SAMS) to eliminate the cumbersome manual roll calls. “The reason for developing the e-timetable is that there are many processes that were ongoing at the university,” Dr. Misinde said. “Our strategic initiatives for the year relate to the University’s continued effort towards the digital University which has been commenced with several systems such as the financial management system and the student records system.”
At the retreat, staff engaged in meetings that were facilitated by the Directorate of Information and Communication Technology Services (DICTS) in two areas namely e-timetabling and biometrics. The presentations also tried to address issues of quality assurance and human resource management policies.
“Our vision is a new timetable that will be better in helping to schedule teaching space, to have less compromise,” said Dr. Misinde. Manual scheduling of classes has been cited to be time-consuming and it brings about issues facing the lecturers’ work twelve and class assignments. “Digital timetabling will do away with such issues because you will be working with a permanent timetable with minimal changeovers,” said Dr. Misinde.
This system will also produce usage and teaching load reports to help control the use of classrooms and the distribution of workload. Besides the e-timetable, another program on pilot now is the SAMS, which hopes to improve attendance for students and staff.
Dr. Misinde stressed that our policy of attendance was correct by pointing out that our students are supposed to attend not less than 70 percent of lectures before they can be allowed to sit for examinations. It will be used to record attendance and issues reports thus creating a system for checking on the quality.
Mr. Juma Katongole, the Principal Information Systems Officer at DICTS, also discussed the benefits of the e-timetable that the system has in interacting with the Academic Management Information System (ACMIS). “The new system is useful for central control of timetables so that clashes and the distribution of learning spaces can be managed effectively,” added Katongole. “It will also assist the heads of departments and at the same time help enhance the general approaches to the timetabling process.”
About the implementation timeline, Katongole responded that while functionality has been implemented at some point, some of the colleges are at a different level of implementation. “Most colleges are close to finalizing their timetabling plans but we propose to fine-tune the system for use at a larger scale next semester,” he added.
It also noticed that both Dr.Misinde and Katongole realized the complexities of this top University, especially in terms of the large student and staff population, as well as the programs offered under CHUSS in different disciplines. “It is important to understand the inter and intra dynamics within CHUSS as we put in place these systems,” Dr. Misinde noted. “Staff feedback will be encouraged to ensure that some of the systems we implement are in line with the requirements of the university.”
Makerere University is set to experience a giant leap in operational efficiency by planning to implement digital systems for timetabling and attendance systems, a push towards modernizing its academic administration. Continuous feedback and adjustment will be crucial to meet the particular issues experienced by diverse colleges in the university.
