Keywords: Scholar Management; Cloud
Computing; Economic Viability; Mobility;
Data Connection; Governance
1. INTRODUCTION
The environmental protection aspects
have widely been increased among worldwide people, concerning the problems
intrinsically associated to the ratio demands and nature resources that already
achieved alarming levels in pollution and their degradation caused by some
organizations (BARBIERI;
CAJAZEIRA, 2009). However, many of these organizations must offer their
services and resources to attempt individual problems, which maximize the
work-power and nature resources consume, consequently, they minimize their
environmental protection and how it will impact future generations (FREIRE, 2007).
This scenario is not different in
educational institutions, prevailing the immediate economic and demands ratios
over the environmental impact, where
there are a large financial demands in papers to print documents,
printers and their consume items, computers and their maintenance, and
electrical power to support these electronic equipments. These financial
expenses have relatively been increased proportionally to the number of
students in these educational institutions (PEREIRA; SANTOS, 2013).
However, today there are
computational technologies that support the economy and efficiency of theses
procedures, which also provides more efficiency, confidence, security, mobility
and management tools by the data centralization in cloud computing and their
worldwide data share or distribution with mobile devices (ARAÚJO; CAVALCANTE,
2015). Furthermore, the cloud computing adoption also contribute for the
governance and comprehension about the laws and regulations, because they are,
generally, developed under these assumptions.
Moreover, under the technological
and environmental aspects in educational institutions, the centralized
infrastructure promotes viable economic in the acquisition of computers (saving
a computer server per institution), specialized work-power to attempt each
institution in maintenance and trainings,
data integrity and confidence, agility to response external auditors and
the direct impact in power energy and paper consume.
However, this centralized
infrastructure is complex to be mandatory in this continental country, by the
unavailability or low access to the Internet, being the main disadvantage to be
considered to design this solution (CRUZ; NERI, 2015).
In this scenario, this work presents
in SectionII some of the main Brazilian educational regulations and how the
technologies are allowed to be introduced in private and public institutions.
The Section III presents concepts and technologies available for cloud and
mobile technologies to attempt educational institutions management,
exemplifying with an App developed to communicate with a cloud system and to be
execute in any mobile device to perform students frequency and assessments.
This mobile integration is well justified by their offline work possibility
allowed by a local database storage by the SQLite technology, which it can
synchronize their data with this central cloud system by a Software as a
Service (SaaS) (DIETMAR, 2012). Finally, the Section IV presents final remarks
and the work in progress by these work team group.
2. GOVERNANCE AND EDUCATION: BRAZILIAN REGULATIONS FOR
TECHNOLOGIES SERVICES AND ACQUISITIONS
The Brazilian Federal Constitution
(BFC) was defined in 1988 and received many updates since then. It was created
by National Constituent Assembly and its objective is to secure peoples
individual and social rights, freedom, security, welfare, development, equality
and justice as the main and supreme justice (Saraiva, 2016). It also designated
the educational duties offers by the State and Family, and the individual
obligations to live in a fraternity society. The BFC is taken as the mother law
by the Brazilian institutions.
From this BFC Law, other federal
institutions with vested rights, create their regulations, are those toward the
education or for the use and purchase of services and technologies. For public
institution they are the only path to attempt the public demands, as described
in II.1. is presented the main educational regulations and II.2. the
technological ones, since the management until the acquisitions and contract
description.
2.1. Educational Regulations: Governance and Management Aspects
The Brazilian Educational basis is
architecture regulated by the Law of Guidelines and Bases (LDB - Lei de
Diretrizes e Bases), which was instituted in 1996, and in its first article
defines the educational scope and types of occurrence in society (BRASIL,
1996). Furthermore, this LDB also regulate the educational system and its levels
and types, since from pre-school,
permeating the elementary, high-school, technical and special offers,
and how the professional and financial responsibilities shared by the Federal,
State or Municipal hierarchy.
The Union Federation distributed the
annual budget according to the previous Annual Budget Law (LOA - Lei
Orçamentária Anual) and these governmental hierarchies are responsible to apply
and monitor the financial resources, following the BFC and fiscal responsibility laws. In
educational institutions, they also follows the LDB as a basic regulation to
apply the minimal necessities, where an association to The National Educational Plan (PNE - Plano
Nacional da Educação) is required in this instance (BRASIL, 2014).
The PNE regulates the educational
priorities in a certain time interval, instead of some specific regulation with
prior deadline specifications. These priorities basically attempts the BFC,
under the article 214, which main divided in six points, being (Free
Translation of the BFC):
a) illiteracy eradication;
b) universal school assistance;
c) improving the education quality;
d) work capacitation;
e) humanistic, scientific and
technological advancement of the country.
f)
the
establishment of goals to apply public resources on education as a proportion
of gross domestic product. (Included by Constitutional Amendment No. 59, 2009)
In the PNE, in its 2nd
article, the democratic management of public education is also associated to
the principles of the human-rights, diversity and social-environmental sustainability
(BRASIL, 2014).
These regulations
are only a few necessary guidelines to offer and manage the educational institutions, since public
and some of the private ones. In public institution, the employees also,
basically, follows the Law N. 8.112, from December, 19th, 1998,
which describe the juridical aspects of the civil public employees of
government agencies and foundations (BRASIL, 1990). This RJU point out the
rights and duties of each public servant and establish that they are allowed to
execute their activities only following the governmental regulations specific
for each occupation and situation, including how the employee will interact
with society and offers their services.
The Ministry of
Education, for example, in December 29th, 2008, under the Law
11.892, institutionalize the Federal Professional, Science and Technology
Education Network (RFEPCT - Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e
Tecnológica), which composed by the Federal Institutes for Education, Science
and Technology (IFs), by the Federal Technological Univeristy of Paraná
(UTFPR), Federal Centre of Technological Education (CEFET) from Minas Gerais
(CEFET-MG) and Rio de Janeiro (CEFET-RJ) and Technical Schools associate to
Federal Universities and the Colégio Pedro II. It is a network composed by
almost 600 unities nationality distributed in the Brazilian Federation and
employ close to 100.000 people, including administrative and professors that
teach since the elementary until the doctorate graduate level (SETEC/MEC,
2016).
It is an interesting example of how complex could the management of a public national educational network and following the laws and other governmental regulations and their specific attributions for employees and their application in the educational offer. In this sense, tools are necessary to automatize these procedures and elucidate the steps necessary to conclude them. Herein, the recent computational are shown as alternative tools to attempt and support these demands and regulations. However, this technological adoption have also been regulated, and some of them are presented in the next section, under the governance perspectives.
2.2. Governance and Technologies: Some Regulations and Instructions
The Brazilian Federal Government has
recently focused on the concious democratic digital inclusion, since the
planning until the technologies use. These affirmations is partially based on
the instruction and regulations to behave these processes, as the Normative
Instruction Number 4 (NI-4/2014), from 11th November, 2014, whereby it
regulates the processes to hire Information Technologies by the institutions
members of System of Information Technology Resources (SISP - Sistema de
Administração dos Recursos de Tecnologia da Informação) from the Federal
Executive Branch (LORENI, 2014).
The IN-4/2014 regulates the players (people and institutions), documental, purchasing steps and ways to justify each technological item to be acquired, being a complex and bureaucratic procedure to establish some well defined planning specifications, as here simplified presented in Figure 1.
Figure
1: Documents and Players related in the IN-4 from 2014.
After the technologies acquisition,
but focusing on the work team group management, the SISP published in 2013 a
free and brief online tutorial to describe how to manage projects from SISP and
support Information Technology Committees (ICTs) to manage their own
Information Technology projects (SISP, 2013).
This document is based on the PMI
(Project Management Institution) that specifies important recommendations
internationally accepted and executed under their Foundational Standards
described in the well known PMBOK Guide, where Executive, Project Portfolio,
Project and Operational Management routines are grouped to simplify how the
management activities are performed.
Furthermore, the SISP in association
with Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management, has online free available
template files to describe all artifact specified in the IN-4/2014 and
following PMI/PMBok Governance recommendations procedures described in (SISP,
2013), which can be accesses in http://www.sisp.gov.br/mgpsisp/wiki/Artefatos.
This Wiki governmental site is also
available instructions to analyze the current and continuity status of these
projects, being an interesting tutorial to prime the It is an important
document to evaluate the continuity of government projects or state plans
regarding the use and acquisition of information technologies.
These documental references allows
educational institutions to plan their software and hardware acquisition and
development, planning their own systematic future, independent of the
governmental conditions. However, they must plan their computational approaches
firstly considering the financial costs (free software as much as possible),
storing data in any national database to attempt the national sovereignty and
specialized work-power to maintain these systems.
In this sense, this work proposed a cloud based system, where all management data from educational institution are available and some of these data also synchronized with mobile devices to provide flexibility and mobility for an multi-platform and national access, since considering the Brazilian distances (Figure 2).
Figure
2.Brazilian cloud and mobile schematic for a national educational system.
3. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE TECHNOLOGIES ALREADY AVAILABLE TO
USE AND DEVELOP APP AND CLOUD BASED TECHNOLOGIES
The educational institutions procedures are different in almost of the cases, requiring some suitable computational routines to maximize its correct use. Henceforth, a simple UML User Case Diagram in Figure 3. is presented to represented the main/global educational relations here considered to list some technologies twofold already available for application and development of cloud/app based approaches, describe in subsections III.1 and III.2, respectively.
Figure 3.Simple User Case
Diagram to Visualize Basic Services Relations.
3.1. Technologies to Use: Downloading and Using
The online stores and companies
offers a wide range of mobile and cloud based software for educational
environments. However, some software are here listed as a partial Web search
and taking in account some of the services shown in Figure 3, including free or
private softwares to manage scholar environment beyond services offered by some
Cloud Based system (SaaS) and mobile applications.
Therefore, the software Gennera,
Ellucian, Sponte, Fekara and Renweb are below listed, taking in account their
main computational approaches to save time, money and automatize some
management proposed processes, scoring their relevant resources and pointing
out their missing tools. It is important to emphasize that each software
information is based on their software developer company website.
·
Gennera: Operating in more than 750
institutions, in 25 Federative States and in the District Capital, also
according to the official website, the Gennera software provides a fully
modular based cloud solution that has as main purpose to support online
professionalize the management of educational institutions. This system has a
main module with initial resources and also provides functionality modules that
can be added to the main module used in the management of the institution.
Among all the available features present, they also highlighted their resources
to support the communications between teachers, students and parents, aiding
teachers' record and release notes, faults and events, as well as, official
documents maintenance resources such as newsletters, enrollment and protocols,
which can be viewed by parents, students and teachers as necessary. Another
important aspect of the software is the
possibility to integrated it with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems,
as the SAP Business One. However, because it is a full web solution, the
software does not have any application for mobile devices, being negative
ineffectiveness in offline environments.
·
Ellucian: it is a worldwide used
software, including more than 2400 instutions and 18 millions of registered
students. It is also modular system, being possile to acquire specific modules,
as Gennera software. On the other hand, Ellucian offers a mobile based
application to support the learning of students able to notify them of events
or university warnings, teacher messages, and has integration with social
networks with the purpose of maximizing iteration between the students.
However, it is mainly maintained by the available college cloud database.
Another important difference, is their financial modules that was created by
themselves, instead of Gennera that allows the integration with some external
ERP based module. As a negative information, this software focus only on
institutions and higher education students, and has no application to mobile
devices to aid teachers.
·
Sponte: Unlike Ellucian, cited above,
Sponte is a modular application that does not maintain a school level focus,
with targeted modules from infant to graduate. Among the products offered by
the software, one of the highlights is the ERP system for language schools in
Brazil, according to the official website, it is used by more than 3,700
customers. In addition to the ERP service, among others, the system relies on
the issuance of documents, frequency control and gradebook programming,
proposing the computerization of institutional management described in this
paper. Furhtermore, it has an application for students to perform academic
appointments. However, similar to Ellucian, all access to the system carried
out by the teacher and administrators is only performed via browser.
·
Fekara: it is a software marketed by
schemes, being a system for school management in a cloud computing that offers
since from basic until advanced modules featured according to the acquisition
of new schemes and it also has a free scheme aimed for small school. This free
scheme has among its limitations, by the students register and how many people
are allowed to used and their bandwidth connection. The Fekara has the
advantage of a similar use of the Web application platform, enabling the use of
both students and teachers. However, it has the downside of not having as many
administrative tools that the previous ones, such as an ERP system robust
present in all systems previously mentioned (copyright or integrated with a
third party).
·
Renweb: as around 300 featured and
over 4000 user institutions. It is able to manage various relevant components
in an educational institution, such as entrance exams, library, information
about students and their parents, diaries class and documents generated by the
institution.Negatively, as well as Fekara, does not have an integrated ERP
system. However, the management of some resources is delegated to specific
modules, such as the management of funds for the payment of employees, which is
held in the module "Human Resources / CEU". Positively, among the
previous software analyzed, the Renweb is the only one that has two mobile
applications, being one facing the features that relate to the student, and
another, made specifically to suit the features of the teacher. In addition, as
was mentioned, possess a wide range of functionalities which can be aggregated.
Some summarized informations are
presented in Table 1, associating App and Cloud based technologies approaches
with actors that use them.
Table 1. Main technologies and
actors associations to automatize educational institutions management.
|
|
Gennera |
Ellucian |
Sponte |
feKara |
RenWeb |
|
Student App |
N |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
|
Teacher App |
N |
N |
N |
Y |
Y |
|
Free Access |
N |
N |
N |
Y |
N |
|
ERP System
Integration |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
N |
|
Target Institution |
N |
Y |
N |
N |
N |
|
Frequency Control |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
3.2. Technologies to Develop Cloud and App Based Software
In order to satisfy every features previously mentioned and
also attempt Brazilian regulations, for cloud/App based applications
development for educational institutions request sophisticated computational
resources as well as specialized professionals. It is necessary to support all
native capabilities of mobile and operating systems devices, whether iOS or
Android. Thus, the application must be able to work on multiple platforms
(mobile, tablet, notebook, etc.),
displaying unique behaviors when run on mobile devices, without any
functionality lost. Withal, these computational solutions must have access the
native capabilities of the device, such as access to offline database
operations.
Thereby, different paths can be followed, considering:
mobile and Web applications occurring in parallel and with different tools; or
development of a unique hybrid application that supports different devices and
media. Where each developer/user would mention strong and positive points of
their toolboxes (WASSERMAN, 2010), where in the Website Stackshare (2016),
listed three tools for hybrid application development in cloud computing and
the strengths of the tool, according to users, as:
·
Ionic: it enables rapid prototyping, by using
AngularJS, which is a javascript framework maintained by Google widely known
and used. It is a free and presented great designs that also attempts the MVC
pattern by the integration of JS, HTML and CSS in the front-end and PHP as the
main back-end language. In this sense, the Web based software interface reuse
is easy.
·
PhoneGap: it is maintained by Adobe,
under a free and user friendly developer tool that support many platforms,
being a powerful framework that also integrate JS, HTML and CSS as front-end
technologies;
·
Xamarin: it is C# programming language
for mobile devices, also available in Microsoft .Net Platform with their native
UI controls and performance. It is truly
JS compiled code, which allows to share more than 90% of code over all
platforms and attempt MVVM pattern.
4. INITIAL EFFORTS TOWARDS AN INSTITUTIONAL EDUCATIONAL
TECHNOLOGICAL CLOUD/MOBILE BASED SOLUTION - STUDENTS CLASS CONTROL MODULE
An initial
software version already presented in (MACHADO, et al; 2016) that
attempt all governmental regulations and application requirements, including
the integration of online and offline approaches.
Two different interconnected and synchronized
system are proposed. At first, as the basic and core system, a cloud SaaS
system was provided to attempt the usability and flexibility criteria to be useful in
different devices, providing a responsive interface. The responsiveness may
generally be defined as the suitability of the system interface to different
devices such as, for example, desktop computers, smartphones and tablets (O'REILLY, 2007).
This feature is important for a system in cloud computing taking in account the usability flexibility, considering different computational display and devices. Moreover, the interface to meet the main browsers available and provide visual fast responses in low connection rate and clear interface features, the use of HTML5 languages is necessary, in association to CSS3 and JavaScript as shown in Figure 4, returning a lightweight data streams. Finally, the data storage architecture was chosen to easily integrate the Database Management System (DBMS) MySQL with PHP 5.5 language and the mobile database SQLite.
Figure 4. Main SaaS software interface.
On the mobile application (App) side, the PhoneGap framework was chosen as main technologic resource, being well justified by their PHP based language, simple developer interface, free online download as well as documented, and it provides simple object-data-connector with many databases, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Main class frequency control app interface.
Besides the technological integrations possibilities, another important well stablished and validated resource is the device and screen acceptance, under some responsive techniques adopted from the Phonegap framework. In Figure 6 is showed multiple devices using the same App in different display resolution.
Figure 6. App multiple display interface example.
5. CONCLUSIONS AND WORK IN PROGRESS
This work is mainly
a prospective review about Federal IT regulations in public institutions,
focusing on the educational environments. In this sense, it also presents some
online private or free system that partially attempt Brazilian educational
institutions.
Therefore, a
cloud based system to systematically centralize institutional data are proposed
in association to a mobile application (App), as shown in Section IV with
simple reference application to attempt all Federal regulations, which is now
being extended to other functionalities, also considering technologies adopted
by Federal Institutions, such the IFSP and their recent Web based software
acquisitions.
This work team
group is now working to insert novel management resources in this cloud-app
based system, thinking to integrate some educational tools already adopted as
learning objects in some classes. Thus, allow us to provide a suitable and free
online platform for educational purposes.
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