Abstract:

Supporting the shift into the language of technology, which has become the language of the era and the best communication method- brings to fruition accuracy, achievement and electronic governance of procedures and transactions. This study will benefit from the current digital transformation to keep pace with the fast-tracked works towards the future. As the number of students expected to graduate from universities around the world grows, demand for post-graduate services is increasing. The next step after the students receive the graduation documents is often either opting for the labor market or postgraduate studies, and in both cases, students need to obtain scientific recommendation letters from faculty members who taught them during the university stage.

Yet, using the traditional way to issue this type of document takes a great deal of time and effort on the part of faculty members. In fact, it takes more effort in the case of a large university such as King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, where the number of students is huge, with a total of 20,000 graduates each year. Nonetheless, this time and effort ought to be used for the benefit of the University teacher’s primary role through these three cores: Teaching, scientific research and community service. On the student’s side, postponing the scientific recommendation granter may cause delays in the student’s education or loss of available career opportunities; in addition to the possibility of errors in the format or information provided by the recommending teaching staff member.

The study therefore provides a method to develop a system of online student scientific recommendations related to the university's academic affairs databases. The student first reviews all the ultimate-level studied courses where he/she obtained a standard degree determined by the system supervisor, and then selects five courses to get scientific recommendations on them. He can leave a private message for each course supervisor faculty to remind him about his most important achievements. Likewise, the system can ignore reviewing the courses which teachers left the university. The requests are then sent to the instructors who shall add the appropriate recommendation for each course by using pre-made templates but with student-specific data, based on his academic performance.

The expected impact of this system is the reduction of effort and time so that a single scientific recommendation is completed in minutes, contrary to the previous traditional procedures that may take weeks. Thus, there will be an elevation in the beneficiaries’ satisfaction degree, in addition to the accuracy of the information provided in the recommendation for each course and each student. Hence, the recommendations turn out to be objective unlike the vague templates that are given to all students without stipulating the information for each of them.

The final system product will be presented in the detailed study, which consists of scientific recommendations in digital documents to be sent automatically to the graduate either through the system, via e-mail, to the employers or graduate universities; thereby achieving a high degree of reliability and guaranteeing the absence of any forgery possibility. One more expected benefit is the database collection of students' destinations after graduation, which will contribute to understanding the upcoming graduate batches’ future.

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, system design, recommendation letters, student services.