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Survey on Data Dissemination In
Education Management Information System
Ruchika Thukral, Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi, India E-mail: ruchikathukral2203@gmail.com
Anita Goel, Deaprtment of Computer Science, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, India E-mail: agoel@dsc.du.ac.in
Abstract— In education system, the collected data is processed and disseminated to be consumed by end users, like, policy makers, planners, students, parents, educational institutes, districts, states etc. The data is disseminated in different formats, like, annual digests, summary reports, report cards etc. in both printed and electronic ways. The Education Management Information System (EMIS) allows the end users to view or download the desired data. Special provisions are also made, so that data can be directly accessed by the selected end users for further analysis. The process for direct data transfer or program to program data transfer is a tedious task. It has limitations, like, hardware and software dependency of the end user on the EMIS application, requirement of database connectivity code and updates on end user’s side with every update in the EMIS application. It requires special infrastructure and professional expertise on the end user’s side. Web services allow transfer of data across heterogeneous platforms. Web services are being used in different areas for data dissemination, like, geospatial, governance and weather forecasting. Using web service for data dissemination in education system shall allow direct data access irrespective of the hardware and software compatibility at the end user's end with the EMIS. Here, we discuss the different ways of disseminating the data in the education system. In this paper, we present an overview of the process for dissemination of data for the EMIS of different countries. We also introduce using of web services for the data dissemination process in the education system.
Index Terms—Data Dissemination, End users, Education Management Information System (EMIS), Education System, Web Service, XML, Client (End User) Application
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ducation Management Information System (EMIS) is an information system whose purpose is to collect, process, analyses and present data of educational institutes. There
are three phases of EMIS functionality: 1) Data collection phase where data is collected from educational institutes, 2) Data process phase where data is processed in the form of tables, summary reports, charts etc. and 3) Data dissemination phase where processed data is disseminated to end users. Here, we focus on different ways of data dissemination.
EMIS makes data available to users to encourage planning and implementation of policies in time. It is needed to:-
• Provide better educational facilities especially in re- mote areas where lack of infrastructure and teachers
• Strengthen decision making process with relevant and consistent information in time
• Implement educational policies in time to increase the standard of education as per global requirements
• impart quality education for betterment of society
It is also responsible to provide educational data to users of educational information.
Data requirement of different end users in education system is different so there is a need that data be disseminated accord- ing to the end user’s need; Such as, at administrative level or sub administrative level, information requirement is [9]:
• Teacher needs detailed results, by subject or by stu- dent.
• Head needs detailed information of all the students, infrastructure, teacher training requirement, vacancies and school result with comparison to previous years.
• District manager needs information regarding all the
schools such as student enrolment, infrastructure re- quirement, teachers’ requirement and admission pat- tern.
• State/region manager needs information of all the districts come under the region.
• National administrators need information on admis- sion, girls-boys ratios, dropouts, repeaters, teacher’s requirement in educational institutes and other in- formation for budget analysis.
End users need educational data for many purposes, like, comparison of different institutes, searching vacancies, analyt- ical study for future planning, research etc. End users are de- fined in two categories, internal end users and external end users. Internal end users are planners, decision makers, deci- sion support system, experts and educational administrators within the ministry of education and external users are re- searchers, students, teachers, government and non- government organizations, national and international organi- zations, civil societies and private individuals outside the min- istry of education [21].
In order to do the present the paper, we have explored EMIS web sites of many countries and studied the dissemination process and reporting formats. To cater the requirements of end users, data is collected from educational institutes, pro- cessed and published in annual digests. These digests are available in printed form as well as electronic form on EMIS web site. Annual digest is collection of raw data as well as analysed data with brief summaries, charts or comparison tables [2],[12],[17],[14] and [15]. Though annual digest in- cludes all types of information but due to abundance of tables
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it becomes difficult for the end users to find relevant data. EMIS provides processed data in the form of report cards or analytical summaries with tables and charts through web site in portable format or in excel sheets. The available data through reports is sometimes not relevant according to the requirement of end user or the data may be in abundance which needs to be further segregated for analysis purpose [2]. Registered users like districts or states are provided with client applications (end users applications) to download complete data directly to their database on their computing system. End users who need to import data on their computing systems, required to install client application at their end to access data directly. To install application, end users need to have same language drivers and database connectivity coding. Also we found that small modification at EMIS side requires modifica- tion at end users’ side as well. Thus application to application data transfer is possible with current data dissemination sys- tem of EMIS for privileged end users with lots of hardware and software arrangements which discourages some times.
To overcome these issues we introduce web service interface
to access centralized data base directly by both types of end
users i.e. registered and unregistered. This gives a new way to
access data from EMIS database and retrieve data in XML
document. Thus web service interface provides more flexibil-
ity to end users to use required web service from the set of
web services present on web site to download relevant data.
The users who want to further analyse the data can transfer
data directly to analytical application as web service retrieve
data in XML format which is independent of programming
language or computing platforms. Web service enables appli-
cation to application data transfer by end users where end users are only required to use web service client code (WSDL) to download relevant data. Web service client is defined with WSDL which makes it easy to install by end users without the
requirement of application and database drivers and installa- tion codes. Web service client application needs no modifica- tion in end users’ computing systems. Data retrieved in XML format is easy to understand and can be used in any analytical software regardless of programming languages and operating systems. In this paper, we discuss the different ways of data dissemination in education system and also introduce applica- tion to application data dissemination through web service interface. Web service database access does not require special software and hardware settings for application to application data transfer.
This paper is divided in seven sections; section 2 explains dif- ferent ways to disseminate data in education system. Section 3 reveals issues of data dissemination in education system. Sec- tion 4 describes web service and section 5 presents related work done in web service data dissemination in different are- as. Section 6 proposes web service in data dissemination for education system through EMIS. We have conclusion in sec- tion 7 which is followed by references.
Dissemination of data is done in number of ways, like, dis- tribution of abstracts, quick references, indicator reports on regular basis, publication and distribution of pamphlets and distribution of reports to planners and decision makers in printed way [21]. EMIS publishes annual digest which are dis- seminated at national and sub national levels, like, centre, state and districts in printed form or in electronic form using CDs. Data in annual digest is tabulated in an organized and logical way with brief summaries. There are different ways to disseminate data which are discussed as follows:
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Publication and distribution of different kinds of reports to a large group of end users increase the dissemination budget. So, education has provided the facility to access data directly through internet using EMIS web site. Different data output formats are given in table 1 [4],[9],[21]:
lute numbers or percentage.
Fig. 1 Flat table [4]
Fig. 2 Cross-tabulation table[4]
Annual digest of statistics is a kind of year book which con- tains data in tabular format like flat tables, cross-tabulation table and geographical summary table. Flat table is used by EMIS to store all relevant data in one table where several vari- ables are presented in columns as shown in Fig. 1. Such table is used for keeping data of a school, like, data in a spreadsheet. Cross-tabulation table shows data in two dimensions or with two categories where one variable is presented in two direc- tions as shown in Fig. 2. It can be used to present data in abso-
Geographical summary table shows data for more than one geographical unit like villages or cities in a district etc. It pre- sents the comparison percentage taking more than one varia- ble for same geographical unit like villages as shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3 Data in Geographical summary [4]
Annual statistical abstract is summary of statistical data as shown in Fig. 4, for all end users whether user is a researcher or planner, teacher or student, who needs statistical data for reference purpose.
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Fig. 4(a) Statistical data[10] and table 4(b) State wise statistical data[16]
Quick references reports:- are reports which provide statistical summary for end users who need quick summary instead of detailed data.
Indicators reports: - “An indicator is synthesized and analyzable information, presented in terms of a measurable value (such as a ratio, rate, percentage etc.). It can be used to describe how an education system functions and performs.”4. This is to analyse information systems’ performance which is to be produced on regular basis. Its objective is to identify progress made and problems come across by educational units at different level of administration. Thus it provides important information to planners, decision makers and likes to take correct course of action.
Online report cards, districts and states are also available by
EMIS website in tabular format. Online reports are open for all
end users by selecting options on user interface of EMIS web
site. Countries all over the world publish data online either in
statistical reports or raw data for schools or districts to provide
more transparency in education management [7]. Table 2 lists
the website link of EMIS of different countries and the formats
of online data dissemination highlighting their key features.
As EMIS disseminates data using different ways of reporting system and dissemination methods. Data is available on inter- net through EMIS website to provide information to end users like planners, administrators, researchers, policy makers, deci- sion makers etc. EMIS also offer program to program transfer of data for end users like state or district by using client appli- cation. In such data transmission, end users need to employ special staff to install software and hardware components, use only client application provided by EMIS with database driv- ers and connectivity strings on same platforms to have com- plete compatibility on both sides. Such arrangement needs
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regular modifications with every modification in EMIS sys- tem. There are many departments who would need data in different formats for further analysis. Here, we address the issues in the current data dissemination system in education management. The issues are as follows -
• Education management provides data in different formats like PDF, spreadsheets and HTML format which can be viewed and downloaded by end users. PDF format is the format which cannot be used in any other format to be analyzed by end users. Spreadsheets can be copied and parsed to any analytical software but specialists have to be hired to accomplish the analytical task. HTML format is not accepted directly by any of programming lan- guages.
• There is same data for all end users like planners, adminis- trators, schools, districts, states, ministries, researchers etc. which has same set of queries to retrieve educational in- formation. Every end user has different requirement of data but data retrieval is almost same for all users which is sometime not relevant. Data retrieval is also in abun- dance which requires sorting before it is further analyzed.
• EMIS gives direct data access through web site for registered users only. Other users who are not registered are only provided with limited data available on EMIS web site and online year books. Students or researchers have to satisfy with defined tables or charts and face scarcity of data in such cases.
• Registered users, like, institutes, districts or states are giv- en facilities by few EMIS websites to upload or download data directly to EMIS database. To download or upload data from EMIS database, registered users have to have same database and application as of EMIS end. They need to install complete computing environment for the same. End users are required to download same web application at their end as on EMIS side. Here an issue arises is the technical infrastructural arrangements. To access data from EMIS data base, drivers used on EMIS side have to be installed on end users’ side as well. With every change on EMIS side, end users’ side has to be updated “see Ref.
6”. Heterogeneous databases access is also not possible with a web application because related database code needs to be written in each individual application “see Ref. 19”. Thus direct data transfer from application to applica- tion is possible with current EMIS system which has lots of limitations.
To handle these issues, we introduce web service interface in education data dissemination system.
Web service enables publishing of applications on the web to be used by any application across the web, independent of computing environments. Web service has three main compo- nents: - SOAP, UDDI and WSDL. Web service uses SOAP which is based on XML based message protocol. It supports interoperable machine to machine interactions using SOAP messages (www.w3.org). The transport protocols (HTTP, FTP, SMTP etc) used by web service are standard protocols on in-
ternet. Web service describes itself in Web services Description Language (WSDL) which is based on XML. It also describes its parameters, transport protocols used and how to invoke them. Third component is like a telephone directory; Universal De- scription, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) which lists web services to be located by any user[3]. Thus web service lever- ages web standards and successfully adopted by all networks and programming languages.
Web services communication is not limited to any operating systems, programming languages, hardware configuration or communication protocol [8]. It leverages existing web stand- ards to access data from remote databases through applica- tions which require a small XML messaging client [6], [11]. It is web based application which can be published and accessible by users programmatically [1]. Thus web service provides in- teroperable interface for data access from data base.
Web service also provides interface to share data, data logic, metadata, business entities in a heterogeneous computing en- vironments. It also eliminates the need of driver oriented communication because driver installed at database side can be accessible from client through web service. This facilitates direct access to data base irrespective of security, performance, scalability and reliability [19]. Data base connections can be shared among different client programs [8], [11], [19] to access data directly from remote database.
Web service data access method is being used by several departments successfully. Web services are used to improve the communication between government and common people. Several web services have been created for women, infant, family health data, employee tax details, child support obliga- tions etc. from distributed database. One government web service can use another government web service to access data from distributed data base [1].
The YEAst Search for Transcriptional Regulators And Con- sensus Tracking information system contains thousands of regulatory associations between transcription factors and tar- get genes. New regulatory associations were added with their experimental evidences and classifies as direct and indirect evidences. In such system, end users found difficult to query data based on data without evidences, with direct or indirect evidences. So, web service interface is used to make data available for end users by querying, retrieving and exploiting YEASTRACT database. Machine readable restful web service was designed to access data for user which is not limited to defined queries set. Users can add their own functionalities; develop their own views on data to retrieve required data[5]. Web applications are being used to access data from relational database through JDBC standard API which requires JDBC drivers to be used on both sides i.e. server and client. Web service can be deployed on server side and querying or up- dates on data base are possible through data base web service. Here client side computation will be done at server side. So web service interface on database would provide SQL based querying system which will return data to client in XML for-
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mat. Also web service provides a database and driver trans- parent interface for client application [6].
Brazilian weather forecast and climate studies center (CPTEC) uses web service to compose queries to access data stored in CPTEC database. CPTEC has made data available on World Wide Web to be queried for different purposes like ed- ucation, research, planning etc. Such kind of dissemination system needs expert staff to put queries on database. This data dissemination mechanism is not suitable for all users. Thus Brazilian weather forecast department has web service inter- face on database which needs moderate knowledge of pro- gramming to retrieve data for further analysis [18].
Users Users Users
XML
XML XML
Web service
Client
Web service
Client
Web service
Client
Web Service Interface
Drivers
Data
Web service is used in water resources management pro- cesses through WISDOM which is bilateral project between Germany and Vietnam. Wisdom is an Information system for the Meknog delta which covers spatial and non-spatial data collection and dissemination. Web service provides enough flexibility to access spatial data and rendered maps from relat- ed database [21].
Web service is used to extract information from SABIO-RK
which contains information about biochemical reaction, their
kinetics rate equations with parameters and experimental
conditions. Various search criteria have been defined to com-
ply with complex search queries through web service inter-
face. They have both data access system, old one where web
application is used to access data and new one where web
service interface is being used. Web service offers much faster
and convenient way to access database as compared to old
applications [22].
Bhuvan cell of Indian National Remote Sensing center uses
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services to query the database dynamically. OGC web service provides interopera- bility among distributed geospatial databases to access data [20].
Although web services are being used in different areas, our search for use of web services in EMIS did not yield any results. The existing EMIS database is open to be accessed di- rectly by registered users with their login-id and password. Set of queries have been used to obtain data using web appli- cation. Web application is to be downloaded on client end and client fetches data from the remote database. The unregistered users have to be dependent on annual digests on website or published copy due to security reasons [2], [4], [9], [12], [13], [14], [21].
Web service interface for education system can be used for direct transfer of data from EMIS database to end user’s data- base. Currently, special application is required at the end us- er's end, which can only be used by using database drivers with installation of special software and hardware. Web ser- vice creates web service client application which does not re- quire special setup, as shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 5 Web Service based access to Database using Web Ser- vice Client application
The advantages of using web service are as follows:
• EMIS with web service interface can provide data in
different formats to satisfy the end users requirements. In
such type of interface, each format can be introduced with a web service on end users demand without re- designing of complete user interface. The web ser- vices dissemination system retrieves data in XML
along with spreadsheet or PDF format. Spreadsheet or PDF formats are used by end users to view, print or download data to analyse it using charts or com- parisons bars. End user will have the option for XML data retrieval which can directly be used in their ana- lytical application for further analysis.
• Web service interface will also facilitate end users to se- lect the attributes for accessing required data rather downloading complete data which is not always needed. Thus, it will be easier for end users to study the data for different purposes.
• The web service based system can be designed for both types of end users: registered or unregistered. Govern- ment has some policies to provide data for different end users. Thus with such kind of system, we can have separate facilities for accessing data by end us- ers. Unregistered end users can be given on view fa- cility and registered end users can be given view and download both. Privileged end users can be given di- rect access of data i.e. program to program.
• End users can be provided with a set of web services, where they can choose as per their requirement. End
users are also provided with web service client application where web service functionality can be directly accessed by them. They are free to use web service to fetch data from database to their application with the use of web service clients. For application to application data transfer, programmer only requires XML parsers, package details and connection strings to be used with web service client application6 which is present in WSDL. So that data received can be further used by end users as per their requirements.
• With the use of web service there is no extra cost in- curred for setting up computing environments on both EMIS and end user’s side. Data from EMIS is accessed in XML document with web service interface as com- pared to HTML data retrieval or spreadsheet and is
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flexible to be utilised by end users in different formats through applications at their end. Queries are decom- posed in simple and efficient way through web ser- vices. It also provides efficient interface in multiple user queries in parallel and manages multiple connec- tions [7], [10]. XML queries are easy to understand so no extra cost for employing additional technical staff is required to be incurred by end users.
This paper presents survey on how EMIS disseminates data to end users like students, teachers, institutes, districts, states, researchers, planners, decision or policy makers, NGOs etc. From the survey we found that few countries provide user interface on EMIS website with set of queries to access data- base. Two types of end users may access data: registered and unregistered with the interface provided by EMIS. Data ac- cessed is reported in specified formats like HTML, PDF or spreadsheets. HTML and PDF data formats cannot be directly utilized for further analysis by analytical applications. Direct application to application data transfer has also been provided but with limitations like hardware and software compatibility at both the ends. This paper also introduces web service to be used for data dissemination. This enables program to program data transfer in heterogeneous computing environment and provides access to the desired data in different formats to be further utilized by the end users.
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