28.06.2013 Views

Papers in PDF format

Papers in PDF format

Papers in PDF format

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

A Web Based Decision Support System<br />

Alanis David, Ph. D. (dalanis@campus.mty.itesm.mx)<br />

Ramses Herrera (jherrera@campus.ruv.itesm.mx)<br />

In<strong>format</strong>ion Systems Department<br />

Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey<br />

Sucursal de Correos “ J “<br />

Monterrey, N. L. 64849 MEXICO.<br />

Phone: (528) 358 2000 Ext. 4591, 4088<br />

Distance Education is one of the most important <strong>in</strong>terest areas for the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios<br />

Superiores de Monterrey (I.T.E.S.M). I.T.E.S.M. is a 26 multicampus university located <strong>in</strong> Mexico.<br />

In the last few years, I.T.E.S.M. has developed an extended distance education program (recently called<br />

Virtual University) that <strong>in</strong>cludes: Live satellite classes, Multimedia supported classes, WWW supported<br />

classes and Videoconferences.<br />

The Virtual University uses some of the most important educational schemes because of its coverage and<br />

complexity. In this scheme, the classes are produced and transmitted from two cities: Monterrey and Mexico's<br />

State. Occasionally, some foreign universities like Carnegie-Mellon, Waterloo and Thunderbird, participate as<br />

coproducers.<br />

Remote classrooms form the rest of the educational scheme. At this time, beside the 26 remote classrooms <strong>in</strong><br />

I.T.E.S.M. exist more than 21 remote classrooms <strong>in</strong> Mexico (other universities and private organizations) and<br />

n<strong>in</strong>e <strong>in</strong> foreign universities (USA, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Ecuador).<br />

The Virtual University's ma<strong>in</strong> goal is to apply avant-garde <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion technologies to raise education quality<br />

and to improve the teach<strong>in</strong>g-learn<strong>in</strong>g process.<br />

Modern telecommunication technologies have been implemented to avoid geographic barriers; for example, all<br />

of the classes use: Live television transmissions, On-l<strong>in</strong>e Remote Interactive System (SIR <strong>in</strong> Spanish) that<br />

allows students and teachers to keep real time communication dur<strong>in</strong>g the classes, Telephone and fax, and Offl<strong>in</strong>e<br />

communication (email and netnews).<br />

Accord<strong>in</strong>g to Virtual University's ma<strong>in</strong> goal, teachers are redesign<strong>in</strong>g their classes so they can be supported by<br />

emerg<strong>in</strong>g technologies like WWW.<br />

An example is a Web Based Decision Support System designed for MBA's. On this system, the students have<br />

l<strong>in</strong>ks to pages where they can get support on decisions refered to their homeworks, exams, etc..<br />

The students grant access to the l<strong>in</strong>ks with a password supplied by the teacher at the beg<strong>in</strong>n<strong>in</strong>g of the course.<br />

After gett<strong>in</strong>g access, the students can get charts of their <strong>in</strong>dividual performance on exams, homeworks, papers,<br />

etc.. Another important function of the system is that every student can get charts of performance, classified<br />

by: campus, country and classroom.<br />

As the class is divided on parcial notes, the students can <strong>in</strong>troduce some test values for exams, papers and<br />

homeworks <strong>in</strong> order to simulate the notes they could get. After test<strong>in</strong>g some values, the students can chart the<br />

results (bar, pie, l<strong>in</strong>e) and take a decision that helps them to achieve those notes.<br />

One important goal of the system is to give the students as many <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion as possible so they can improve<br />

their decisions.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!