This academic year was my first year as assistant professor in the ISIGK (المعهد العالي للإعلامية و التصرف بالقيروان | Tunisia). I enjoy teaching in this institute and being in Kairouan for many personal and professional reasons. Here I will talk about the benefits of using Fedena, a School Management Software (SMS), in the ISIGK (Higher Institute of Computer Science and Management of Kairouan).
Whereas this institute is specialized in computer science, the majority of managements tasks are done manually. This makes creating timetables and tracking students arduous tasks that could be automated by customizing Fedena thanks to its open source nature.
The academic and administrative teams could cooperate in this process of customization. These two teams have different backgrounds and skills, but by cooperating together they could produce innovative ideas. They could participate by coding or proposing ideas.
By customizing Fedena instead of creating a SMS from scratch, we could get software beneficial for the everyone--and in record time. In addition, we can get it free of charge, which is very interesting especially at this period when the economy of Tunisia isn't healthy.
Most importantly, Fedena will give academic and the administrative teams the oppotunity to communicate by working on that project. The communication between these two teams is important for achieving the academic goal of spreading knowledge and education. In the ISIGK, some negative prejudices make this communication problematic and difficult, creating a gap between the two teams.
The communication problem has an impact on the atmosphere within the ISIGK. The problem was amplified in the period that preceded the Arab Spring. During that period, where freedom of speech was limited, communication was difficult with anyone.
Now, we are at the post-revolution period. It's time for the the academic and the administrative teams to leave the prejudices behind them and to start working together. By participating on this customization project they will form one group; everyone will be part of that group and feel accepted by its members.
Students could also be part of the group by doing some customizations. For example, the students could gain knowledge of the Ruby on Rails framework in order to realize its potential for customization. Ruby on Rails isn't included in their curriculum, however, the students could master this framework quickly thanks to many free web resources. This gives them the possibility to work on real problems and the opportunity to discover the open source world and all its benefits.
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