Innovations101: Schools
University of Mindanao
The University of Mindanao is the largest private, non-sectarian university in Mindanao located in Davao City.
Established in 1946, the University of Mindanao has ten branches spread over
thirteen campuses in Southern Mindanao. It is currently an Autonomous Status
per CEB Resolution No. 076-2009 with Category A (t) per CMO No. s. 2009
standing accredited by Commission on Higher Education (CHED). It’s Business
Administration and Information Technology programs were Center of Development
(COD) and its Teacher Education program was considered as a Center of
Excellence (COE) by CHED. It is the largest private university in Mindanao and
one of the first top five (5) schools with a highest number of programs
accredited by PACUCOA in the country today.
The University of Mindanao has more than
10 colleges and school located in three campuses. The Colleges of Business
Administration, and Law and the Graduate School are located in Bolton Campus.
The Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Nursing, Engineering, Computing,
Architecture, Education, Forestry, Accountancy, and Criminology are located in
Matina Campus. The Technical and Vocational Courses are located in Bangoy
Campus. Each college is supervised by Dean and Program Heads/Instructor
Coordinator.
When I visited there, it was my first
time to enter their university. Their campus is quite large and their buildings
too. For a first timer, you will feel tired on just walking all over their
campus. I noticed that their drainage does not have a maintenance. As I passed
by a drainage, I can easily smell its bad odor. It is not healthy for the
students who will pass there every day. So they should maintain the cleanliness
of their drainage or they should do something to get lost with the smelly
odor.
Most visitors, freshmen, and transferees
are having a problem familiarizing the school and having a hard time finding
the rooms of their respective subjects, buildings or faculties. Mobile
application UM Map is the most efficient way of knowing the school's vicinity
it is handy and made accurate. First interface is you can see all the building,
pathways, general offices and gates. After clicking on your desired building
you can choose which floor to check for rooms and faculties with individual
labels.
As the University of Mindanao regarded as largest
private school in Mindanao, the enrollees are getting massive each year. The
enrollment process is also getting harder and delayed because of the crowding
new enrollees, thus a new process or technology is needed to hasten the
enrollment to prevent exhaustion and save time for each individual, thus
improves the congeniality of the school.
By my assessment to the school and came up to
this problem, I would like to propose a biometrics enrollment process.
Biometrics itself, refers to technologies that
measure and analyze human body characteristics, such as DNA, fingerprints, eye
retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns and hand measurements, for
authentication purposes. This works by scanning your thumb and serves as
the identification, confirmation, verification of the enrollee. For new
students, instead of showing the credentials over and over again to each
authorized personnel of the school, just let your thumb scanned to the
biometrics scanner and confirm you have done the specific steps. The
information will show on the personnel’s computers for encoding purposes. For
an old student, do not need to bring anymore papers to encode, only need to scan the thumb and your records
would show on the monitor and get encoded faster.
Holy
Cross of Davao College
The Holy Cross of Davao College or known as
HCDC is a private and research Catholic college institution founded by the
Religious of the Virgin Mary Sisters in 1951 and maintained by the Foreign
Mission Society of Quebec (PME Fathers) in 1956. In 1978, the administration of
the school was turn over from its founders and passed it on the apostolate of
education to the Archdiocese of Davao. It is located at Santa Ana Avenue,
Poblacion District.
The school is divided into six units including
the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Education, College of Engineering
and Technology, College of Maritime Education, College of Criminology and
College of Business and Accountancy.
It has three campuses, the Main Campus at Sta.
Ana Avenue for undergraduate, graduate, technical and vocational courses. The
JP. Laurel Avenue Campus for elementary and high school. And the other one is
at Camudmud, Babak Island, Samal for undergraduate programs only.
In the school year 2010-2011, they celebrates
their Diamond Jubilee with the theme: 60 YEARS OF EVANGELIZATION WITH GRATITUDE
AND HOPE.
I
asked one of my former classmate in high school who was currently studying in
Holy Cross of Davao College. The common problems that they encounter are, whenever
it is time for payments for the exams only few cashiers are open which affects
the students heavily delaying the transactions and taking so much time just to
pay especially those who are on rush because they have a meeting or a class to
attend to. When it is time for paying tuitions on exam days, they should
refrain from closing most of the cashiers. Perhaps if laziness is the problem,
they should set a schedule that shows all the cashiers will be open to avoid
heavy transactions when they will just open few cashiers.
HCDC’s
enrollment system is quite confusing to the upcoming freshmen students. It
often delays and extends the enrollment period because of having a hard time
following the enrollment process. Thus, a lot of pending enrollees still awaits
their enrollment. They should post somewhere, like a Bulletin Board, that shows
the enrollment system of their college in a way that the new students would
understand. Maybe at their entrance, as the new students enter on enrollment
days, they can give some fliers that shows the enrollment systems so that they
will be aware.
The
facilities also are not enough for the large number of students in the College.
More than 10,000 students are enrolled in this school they provide free 10
hours internet using the Computer Lab but units are insufficient. Even with 3
Libraries it is still not sufficient to provide these students.
In the
Canteen more people gather not only for food but also for the Free Wi-Fi and it
is causing crowding in the canteen and many students are not able to sit. That
is why sometimes it is a problem to find free tables to sit on with this much
students. When students are finding a table to sit on to eat and rest then sometimes
all tables are occupied, it is too exhausting and frustrating. So I thought of
a mobile application that will show the tables in the Canteen. So that the
student will be aware if there are free tables to eat. If not, then they can
just go to other places because they are just near malls and fast food chains.
And also maybe if the Wi-Fi was strong enough to cover the entire college they
would not end up crowding the canteen and staying for so long.
