Requirement Analysis for a Higher Education Decision Support System. Evidence from a Romanian University

Abstract

In recent years, under the impact of social needs development and labour market transformations, universities have begun to increasingly realize that they are involved in a fierce competition. They also begin to accumulate significant amounts of student-level data that could help them to obtain useful information, including far more detailed benchmarking than is currently available and that they can use to better position themselves in the market. In this context there is an obvious need of tools that supports decision making processes and offers highly accurate information. On the other hand data driven decision support system are mature technologies that have proven their effectiveness in business and management. Starting from the premise that almost everyone from a university is feeling pressure to measure, analyze and report on various aspects of the educational process, our study aims by using interviews as research methods to identify decision-making process, knowledge sources, information needs and the extent to what these information needs are currently satisfied by the information systems of a university from Romania. These requirements will serve as starting point for the development of a data driven decision support system for higher education.