C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009

C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

Publication, Training, and Research Administration System (PuTRAS)

Lee Beng Yong1 and Rosita Suhaimi2, Iris Syawe Seh Ling3, Wee Chong Hui4, Robert John Jingut5,
Hawa Bt Hj Nahar6
1
Faculty of Information Technology and Quantitative Science, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sarawak, MALAYSIA
2
Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sarawak, MALAYSIA
3
Faculty of Applied Science, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sarawak, MALAYSIA
4
Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sarawak, MALAYSIA
5
Faculty of Information Technology and Quantitative Science, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sarawak, MALAYSIA
5
Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sarawak, MALAYSIA
1
bylee@sarawak.uitm.edu.my, 2rositasu@sarawak.uitm.edu.my, 3iris@sarawak.uitm.edu.my,
4
wecunwei@sarawak.uitm.edu.my, 5hawa558@sarawak.uitm.edu.my, 6robert@sarawak.uitm.edu.my

ABSTRACT

The Publication, Training and Research Administration System (PuTRAS) is a comprehensive web-
based system developed by the internal staff of Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak to fulfil the
information needs of the organisation. This paper addresses the initial problems of the organisation
when data were distributed among various departments in the organisation hence causing consolidation
and generation of information very difficult. Due to these problems, PuTRAS was designed to be a
centralised database where all records regarding publication, training and research of staff will be
stored. A unique feature in PuTRAS is to allow staff to provide and monitor their own records, which
later will be validated by authorised users of the system. This feature of PuTRAS has significantly
simplified the conventional record keeping process and ensures that important records of the staff are
authentic. This paper also discusses some creative steps that has been taken to promote the usage of the
system and minimise the reluctant and rejection on using the system during the implementation phase.
A simple questionnaire was used to collect feedback of various users and the analysis shows a very
positive result on user satisfaction towards the usage of the system. Lastly, this paper will share some
pre-post experience of PuTRAS implementation. Some awards won by this project are also listed at the
end of this paper.

Keywords: Database, Information system, Web-based system

1. INTRODUCTION

Human resource is one of the most essential resources in any organisation including at Universiti
Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Sarawak. Therefore an initiative has been taken to implement an information
system to keep records regarding to human resource in UiTM Sarawak. Due to the unique requirement
specification of the system, which requires the system to store not only the training records of the staff,
but also publication records and research records of academic staff in the University, there is no available
off-the-shelf system that could be found in the market. Therefore, Publication, Training and Research
Administration System (PuTRAS) has been developed since July 2004 and has been officially launched at
April 2005.
PuTRAS is a web-based system for storing records regarding publication and research that has been
produced by academic staff and training records attended by academic and non-academic staff of UiTM
Sarawak. The system also provides the functionality to analyse the records and produces reports in various
format such as tabular, cross-tab, graph and chart. PuTRAS also assist the management of UiTM Sarawak
to collect on-line information instantly when the information is needed in decision making and planning.

Paper number: 8287896

C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009
C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

1.1 Background of PuTRAS

Before PuTRAS was implemented, the practice used in UiTM Sarawak to collect publication, training and
research records was to distribute and collect printed forms from staff from time to time. After the forms
were collected, the records were entered into spreadsheet and word processing software. The calculation
and the analysis of the records were done manually. With this conventional practice, various problems
have occurred, among the problems are:
• Time consuming to generate reports and analysis
• Required a lot of human effort
• Incomplete and imprecise data
• Difficult to plan for staff training and development
• No sharing of information regarding to academic staff’s research and publication.

1.2 Objective of PuTRAS

The main reason to develop the PuTRAS is to setup a centralise database to store publication, training and
research records of every staff in UiTM Sarawak so that these records could be retrieved easily at anytime.
To be specific, the system is developed based on the following objectives:
• To assist UiTM Sarawak management to acquire latest information promptly and systematically
• To help UiTM Sarawak management to get statistical information regarding to staff involvement
in publication and research according to various criteria such as faculty, and years of service
• To assist UiTM Sarawak management to evaluate staff performance
• To enable outsider of UiTM Sarawak to identify the expertise of staff in UiTM Sarawak to
promote opportunity in consultation and cooperation projects
• To assist in preparing reports on staff training needs
• To assist upper management in UiTM Sarawak to plan on staff training and development
• To enable staff to monitor and update their personal records related to Publication, Research and
Training

2. SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE

PuTRAS was developed with 100% internal human resource and limited monetary funding. Thus, with
money and time limitation, the most suitable development strategy for PuTRAS is Rapid Application
Development (RAD) (Shelly et. al., 2007). In RAD, prototypes were developed and improved from time
to time based on user feedback at different stages of the development. The final product of RAD is a fully
functional new system that evolved from the enhanced prototype developed earlier. The following table
shows the duration and the activities of the different phases of the development life cycle of PuTRAS.

Table 1: System Development Life Cycle and its activities

SDLC Phase Activity Duration
Planning • Formation of PuTRAS Committee
• Identify the needs and human resource for the
project July 2004
• Acquire approval and support from –
management to develop the PuTRAS project August 2004
• Provide recognition to staff who involve in the
development of PuTRAS
Requirement study • Frequently having discussion to identify the
and System Analysis requirement of the system September
• Identifying the software and hardware 2004
requirement for the system –
• Development of system prototype October 2004
• Modification of system prototype

Paper number: 8287896

C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009
C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

SDLC Phase Activity Duration

System Design • Acquiring user feedback based on modified
system prototype
• Modification of system prototype
• Designing the database structure
• Setting up of database November
2004
• Designing reports format
–
System • Acquiring user feedback based on modified March 2005
Implementation system prototype
• Modification of system prototype
• Installation of system
• System Testing
• Acquire support from upper management to
encourage staff to enter their records on
publication, training and research accordingly
• Conduct briefing session on how to use
PuTRAS to academic staff
• Validation of records entered by the staff by the
Coordinator of URDC, Coordinator of UPENA, April 2005
and Officer in charge of staff training –
• Conduct training workshop to guide user on December
entering records into PuTRAS 2005
• Generate reports using PuTRAS
• The commitment of the upper management
was shown when the information from the
PuTRAS was used as a reference during the
annual staff performance appraisal and during
evaluation for promotion of staff
Maintenance & • Frequently encourage user to provide feedback
Monitoring and promptly react to the feedback and
comment received to continuously improve the 2005
system –
• The committee consistently carry out proactive 2007
action to identify methods to improve and
upgrade the performance of PuTRAS

2.1 System Analysis

The System Requirement Specification (SRS) of PuTRAS was obtained through a series of fact-finding
activities, i.e. interview, document observations and prototyping. The context diagram of PuTRAS is
shown in the following Figure 1.

2.2 System Design

During the system design phase of PuTRAS, two major activities occurred was designing the database
structure and designing the user interface. The Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) produced was shown
in the Figure 2. The database was initially designed to be implemented using Microsoft Access 2000
database software but due to rapid increment of records in the database after the system has been
launched, the database later has been changed and implemented using MySQL 5.0.

Paper number: 8287896

C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009
C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

Figure 1: Context Diagram of PuTRAS

The interface of the system was designed base on the usability as a web site. The prototype interface
was shown in Figure 3. After a series of modification, the final user interfaces of the system are shown in
Figure 4 (a) and Figure 4 (b). Figure 4 (a) shows the interface for common user and Figure 4 (b) shows the
interface for Administrator user where more features are available. PuTRAS was designed to support
multi-level user privilege namely the common user, coordinator for UPENA (publication) and Research
Management Unit (RMU), Manager, and Administrator.

Attend M Training

Staff Publication
1 M Write M 1

Is a

M M 1 Research
Conduct

Non Academic Grant M Funded by

Academic
1

Figure 2: ERD of PuTRAS

Paper number: 8287896
C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009
C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

Figure 3: The legacy user interface of PuTRAS

(a) (b)

Figure 4: The existing user interface of PuTRAS for common user (a) and Administrator User (b)

3. EFFECTIVENESS OF PuTRAS

A series of interview has been conducted with the user of the system after the PuTRAS has been
implemented for six months. The objective of the interview conducted was to find out the difference of
time and cost consumption before the PuTRAS was implemented and after using PuTRAS. The difference
was clearly compared in the following Table 2 and Table 3.

Table 2: Comparison on time needed to perform various task before and after the implementation of
PuTRAS
Before PuTRAS After PuTRAS
Task Time Task Time
Needed Needed
Print Forms Lecturer enter their own 5 – 10
Distribute Forms records into PuTRAS minutes per
1 week record
Filling Forms
Submit Forms
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C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009
C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

Enter data into spreadsheet

1 month
program
Manually produce PuTRAS produce
5 days 1 minute
periodical report periodical reports
Manually analyse stored PuTRAS analyse stored
10 days 1 - 2 days
records records

Table 3: Comparison on cost need to perform various tasks before and after the implementation of
PuTRAS
Before PuTRAS After PuTRAS
Task Cost Task Cost
RM0.04 each page x 2
Printing Forms on pages x 500 copies. Using on line web-
None
Training Report Total = RM 40 each based forms
time
Printing Forms on RM0.04 each page x 2
Publication and pages x 300 copies. Using on line web-
None
Research (Academic Total = RM 40 each based forms
staff only) time

4. USERS’ FEEDBACK

A survey was conducted to sample user feedback toward the usability of PuTRAS. A set of 200 copies of
questionnaire was distributed to random selected users, and 30 set of completed questionnaire were
returned. Figure 5 to Figure 10 shows the satisfaction level of users towards the Overall organization of
the website, User friendliness (button, text), Usefulness (in term of keeping & retrieving), Easy to
understand, Easy to navigate and Attractiveness.
Overall, PuTRAS users found that the system is easy to use and useful especially for academic staff
and the management. Users also suggested that the interface of the system should be improved by
providing more interesting graphics and using more suitable colours.

56.7
60
50
36.7
40
Percentage 30
20
6.7
10 0 0
(n=30) 0
Poor Fair Average Good Excellence

Figure 5: User feedback on satisfaction towards overall organization of the website

Paper number: 8287896

C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009
C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

36.7 40
40

30

Percentage 20
10 10
10
3.3
(n=30)
0
Poor Fair Average Good Excellence

Figure 6: User feedback on satisfaction towards system user friendliness

60
60
50
40
Percentage 30 20
20 10
10
(n=30) 10 0
0
Poor Fair Average Good Excellence

Figure 7: User feedback on satisfaction towards system usefulness

60
60
50
40
Percentage 30 20
20 10
10
(n=30) 10
0
0
Poor Fair Average Good Excellence

Figure 8: User feedback on satisfaction towards easy to understand

Paper number: 8287896

C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009
C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

33.3 33.3
35
30
25 20
20
Percentage
15 10
10
3.3
(n=30) 5
0
Poor Fair Average Good Excellence

Figure 9: User feedback on satisfaction towards easy to navigate

46.7
50

40
26.7
30
Percentage 20
20
6.7
10
(n=30) 0
0
Poor Fair Average Good Excellence

Figure 10: User feedback on satisfaction towards attractiveness

5. CONCLUSIONS

PuTRAS is a successful example of using a web-based technology to implement an in-house information

system to store and analyse staff publication, training and research records. The effectiveness of the
system is clearly shown when PuTRAS has significantly help to reduce the time and cost consumption of
the related tasks.
Despite the feedback of the users, various awards that has been won by the project such as Best
Practice Award in Konvensyen Amalan Pengurusan Terbaik UiTM 2008, Bronze Medal Award in
International Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition (ITEX) 2008, Gold Medal Award in
Invention, Innovation and Design Exhibition (IID) 2008 and Second Prize in Sarawak Federal Secretary
ICT Award 2007, has proven that PuTRAS is a innovative information system that has effectively meet its
objective and has been highly accepted by its user especially the UiTM Sarawak staff.

REFERENCES

Anonymous. (n.d.). Entity-relationship model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, [Online], Available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-relationship_model [24 Aug 2007].
Kendall, K.E., and Kendall, J.E. (1995). System Analysis And Design, Third Edition. United States:
Prentice-Hall International, Inc.
Ramakrishnan, R., Gehrke, J. (2002). Database Management Systems. Third Edition. United States:
McGraw-Hill.
Shelly, G.B., Cashman, T.J., and Rosenblatt, H.J. (2006). Systems Analysis and Design, Sixth Edition.
Boston, MA: Course Technology.

Paper number: 8287896