Abstract:

Bologna Process requires the universities to address new study programs management and new teaching techniques and resources. We find often administrative student information systems (SIS) and e-learning platforms working apart, in a non-integrated way. Furthermore, many times, we find that the teaching resources are simple PDF files yet.

Teachers use different tools to manage their courses and their contents, to qualify the students or even to get a list of their students. It seems obvious that the integration between a student information system and an e-learning platform is a must: transferring information between a tool designed for management (SIS) and a collaborative tool (Learning Management System) avoids duplicity of information and duplicity of work, thus facilitating the task to the teacher.

Nowadays, MOODLE and SAKAI are the most extended e-learning platforms worldwide. Because sometimes is difficult to choose one, or because sometimes one has already been chosen, it seems a good idea to be prepared to integrate your SIS with both of them. That means an increased efficiency since processes and data exchange are optimized in a transparent way to the end users, teachers and students.

Solutions have to be usable and intuitive and must provide attractive and high quality teaching contents for the new digital native generations. But the effort needs to be at a reduced cost, so we need to take advantage of the synergies between the different parts in the whole system, and integrating the big fishes.

We want to show how teachers and students can access to a single sign on portal integrating an e-learning platform with administrative tools, and exporting data and functionality to mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets (Android or iPhone/iPad), allowing the community interaction where and when they want to. This functionality includes information about grades, notifications, timetables planning and consultation, etc.

The full solution based on administrative SIS, e-learning campus and mobile devices is developed carrying out the security and performance levels required, with a very simple and user friendly interface.

A pilot of the integration between our SIS and Moodle has been carried out at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, with a set of teachers of the Faculty of Economics involved, obtaining good results. A full deployment of the integration, with more utilities, is planned for September, 2012. Furthermore, more than 7,000 students of this university have installed on their mobile phones (Android and iOS) a version of the App developed for consulting their marks.

Keywords:

Students information system, teacher, e-learning, mobile.