Showing posts with label Academic Rules and Policies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academic Rules and Policies. Show all posts

Thursday, November 24, 2022

UPLB Student Registration Systems: 1996-2022

(Please note that this post is just based on my recollection of events. Here's my 2012 post about UPLB student registration.)





I have been part of UPLB for more than 20 years already, both as a student and as a faculty member. I have witnessed two main modes of the student enrollment (aka registration), manual and automated. In this post I'll try to discuss the different systems I observed and experienced. I will not be specific about dates since I am not good with it. Let's get started.

Simply put, the registration process enables students to select the subjects they will take for the incoming semester. The official document that contains this is the Form 5. One interesting aspect of the registration process in UPLB is that there is no guarantee that a student will be able to get all the subjects he/she needs for the incoming semester. This is due to a lot of factors, e.g. limited number of slots per section, schedule conflict with other subjects, and seasonal subjects.  

When I was a student in the mid '90s, there was a hybrid enrollment process. Students submit a Write-In paper form that contains the subjects and sections they want to enroll for the upcoming semester. The Write-In form will be encoded to the computer and used as input to a FORTRAN program called REGIST, which was developed by Dr. Ricolindo L. Carino of the Institute of Computer Science (ICS).  To my knowledge, this process was in place until I graduated in 2002.

After graduation, I became an instructor in ICS where my colleague Rodolfo N. Duldulao Jr. (Duldz) started developing an in-house system to track enlistment to Computer Science subjects. The system used the Apache-MySQL-PHP tech stack for web apps. This in-house system became popular and was extended to provide an online mechanism for the Write-In process in the entire UPLB. This online system became SystemOne (S1). More features were eventually added to S1 which was deployed during registration period. Note that the initial course assignments in S1 were still generated by REGIST. 

REGIST attempts to "solve"  course/student assignment (or student sectioning problem as I formulated it in my MS thesis). It became an academic research topic for a few MSCS students. Approaches such as Tabu Search, Ant Colony Optimzation, Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithms, and Multiagent Systems (my study) were tried but they never really replaced REGIST.

S1 evolved to become the main system for online Write-In and eventually for enlistment of courses to serve the entire UPLB students. After Duldz left UPLB, another colleague, Rommel V. Bulalacao (Bulacs), took over the development and operations of S1. Bulacs was a volunteer developer of S1 while he was still a student. REGIST however remained to be the main system for automagically assigning students to classes. Several improvements were also made by Bulacs for S1v2. Dr. Carino still provided support, though limited, for REGIST through the Registrar's office. I also coauthored a short paper which identified the performance bottleneck in S1v2 prompting its rewrite to a more modern tech stack, Node.js. This rewritten version (S1v3) however was short-lived. 

When Alfredo E. Pascual became UP president, he initiated the e-UP program. There was a strong push to deploy a unified enterprise system to support all university operations, including registration. This led to the deployment of the Student Academic Information System (SAIS) in UPLB. Key persons in SAIS deployment in UPLB were Dr. Jaime L. Caro(ITDC) and Dr. Myrna Carandang(UPLB Registrar). SAIS is still the current system being managed and operated by ITDC with a local team in UPLB housed in the Registrar's Office. SAIS is more of a "shopping cart" application where students "add to cart" the subjects they want to enlist. There is no global course demand prediction as with the case of REGIST. This resulted to a lot of problems. One of which is that regular students were unable to enlist in subjects because there is no "hard constraint" to prioritize them. Another is that departments were not able to properly predict course demand to adjust their course offerings. 

I also recall a system being deployed in Graduate School by a team led by Mr. Li Bolanos. I don't have the details  about the system though but I think it was written using PHP and MySQL. 

More recently, under UPLB Chancellor Dr. Jose Camacho Jr., an ad hoc committee was formed to oversee the development and implementation of the UPLB DX Academic Management Information System to replace SAIS. The committee is chaired by my colleague who is also the University Registrar, Prof. Margarita Carmen S. Paterno (Marge). Other colleagues involved are Prof. Danilo J. Mercado (ITC Director), Prof. Reginald Neil Recario, and Prof. Monina Carandang. Mr. Li Bolanos is also a part of this team. A version of DX AMIS for Teacher's Prerogative (using PHP-Postgres on VPS) was deployed during the First Semester AY 2022-2023. However, SAIS is still the main app for registration.

All deployed systems, from S1 to DX AMIS, encountered availability problems during peak hours of the registration period due to large amount of network requests.

Sunday, September 9, 2018

Citation and References

During the early days of my career as instructor,  I did not pay much attention to the concepts of copyright and licenses. However, I realized that an understanding of these concepts is important to prevent complications in the future. (See previous post)

Side note:
--
Copyright - safeguards the ownership of an intellectual property
License - document that lets someone use the intellectual property
--

Now, as an assistant professor, I need to prepare materials for teaching and research which include the following:
  • course syllabus
  • course website
  • handouts
  • exams
  • quizzes
  • presentations
  • research papers
  • programs/software
  • blog
  • grant proposals
  • audio/video
  • figures/photos
  • letters
  • computer programs
In preparing these, I use resources that are published online, either by their authors or by third party publishers. These resources are by default copyrighted and thus permission from the authors should be obtained first. However, obtaining permissions may be a tedious task, thus authors indicate the license (such as Creative Commons) to these materials. At the least, authors of these materials should be properly acknowledged.

For research papers and grant proposals, there is usually a standard to follow. In my field, which is Computer Science, the ACM Citation Styles and Reference Formats [1] is widely used. This guideline can also be applied in course websites, course syllabus, blogs, and handouts. A "References" section is placed at the end of these materials which contains the list of other materials cited. In presentations, borrowed images and pictures must also be cited. At the minimum, the following information are needed for a reference entry (d-a-t-t-u):
  • date/year of publication
  • author/publisher (can be a person, organization, legal entity)
  • title
  • type  
  • url/source

Examples:

[1] Joseph Anthony C. Hermocilla. 2018. CMSC 137: Data Communicatons and Networking (First Sem 2018-2019).  Retrieved September 9, 2018 from https://jachermocilla.org/teaching/137/2018-1/.
 
[2] McMillan, T. 2009. Fantail vector [JPG Image]. Retrieved September 9, 2018 from http://www.kiwiwise.co.nz/photo/fantail-vector.

[3] Marie Betel B. de Robles, Joseph Anthony C. Hermocilla, and Miyah D. Queliste. 2017. Buffer Overflow Exploitation on 64-bit Linux Systems [Google Slides Presentation]. Retrieved September 9, 2018 from http://srg.ics.uplb.edu.ph/resources/presentations.

[4] Joseph Anthony C. Hermocilla. 2018. Homework 3: Environment  Variables, Processes, and Threads [PDF Handout]. Retrieved September 9, 2018 from https://jachermocilla.org/teaching/125/2017-2/hw3.pdf

[5] Joseph Anthony C. Hermocilla. 2018. Homework 3: Environment  Variables, Processes, and Threads [Printed Handout].


Some authors find it cumbersome to cite because the information needed are not readily available. It seems that the best way then is to provide a "Reference as:" or "Citation:" element or section in your own materials which include the minimum information, d-a-t-u, above.

References:
  • [1]ACM, Inc. 2018. Citation Styles and Reference Formats. Retrieved September 9, 2018 from https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/reference-formatting.

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Intellectual Property Protection in UPLB

(Last Update: 10 February 2021)

I tried to extract the relevant portions of the guidelines which, in my opinion, apply to our institute.

References:
  1. Types of intellectual properties (UPLB)
  2. Governing policies on intellectual property in UP
  3. RA 8239
  4. UP-IPR-Policy
  5. https://ttbdo.up.edu.ph/policies/copyright-guidelines/

(Text directly lifted from above sources)
 
Most research outputs in UPLB are in the form of inventions, utility models, industrial designs, computer programs, as well as literary, scholarly, and artistic works. Under the IP Code, inventions are protected by patents; utility models and industrial designs by their registration; and computer programs, literary, scholarly, and artistic works by copyright.[1]

Copyright

Copyright is the exclusive and legally secured right given to creators or authors for their literary and artistic works to prohibit or authorize the reproduction or copying of the work. It allows the creator to derive economic or financial reward from the use of his works by others and to claim authorship of a work and to have that authorship recognized.[1][3]

As a general rule, copyright of all works shall remain with the creator, except in cases of institutional or collaborative works. When copyright must be assigned to the university, creators shall disclose the existence and assign the copyright to the university.[2]

Institutional Work

The University shall have exclusive ownership over institutional works[2]. Institutional works include:
  1. works that are produced through research and development funded by any Philippine government agency or instrumentality, or government-owned and -controlled corporation from government appropriations and those source from government managed official development assistance funds.
  2. works supported by a specific allocation of university funds of substantial university resources other than the usual salary and resources made available to every faculty, researcher, student or staff;
  3. commissioned works or those works created at the direction and control of the university through its officials or designates for a specific project or purpose;
  4. works whose authorship cannot be attributed to one or a discrete number of authors despite the application of processes prescribed; and
  5. works whose authorship cannot be attributed to one or a discrete number of authors because it is the result of simultaneous or sequential contributions over time by multiple authors.
Collaborative works

In the absence of any contractual stipulation to the contrary, if the works is the result of collaborative efforts between the University, an outside entity and the creator/s, the copyright shall be jointly owned by the university, the creator/s and the outside entity.[2][4]

Waiver of ownership of copyright by the university

In case of institutional works and works of joint ownership with the University, the university through its designated officials may waive copyright in favor of the creator if all of the following conditions are met[2]:
  • the waiver would enhance the transfer of technology or improve the access of the works by the public in general;
  • the waiver does not violate any existing contractual obligation and to the third parties; and
  • the participation of the University in the work is acknowledged by the creator in all publications of the work, whether local or international.
If the University is unable or has not decided to publish or exhibit the works within one year from its disclosure, its copyright is automatically waived in favor of the creator. The one-year period may also be waived by the University at the request of the creator if the work is to be published in a reputable international or local journal relevant to the academic discipline to which the work belongs. The contribution of the University shall be duly acknowledged in all publications or exhibitions of the work.


(RA 8293, Part IV: The Law on Copyright)[3]

Section 177. Copyright or Economic Rights. -
Subject to the provisions of Chapter VIII, copyright or economic rights shall consist of the exclusive right to carry out, authorize or prevent the following acts:

177.1. Reproduction of the work or substantial portion of the work;

177.2. Dramatization, translation, adaptation, abridgment, arrangement or other transformation of the work;

177.3. The first public distribution of the original and each copy of the work by sale or other forms of transfer of ownership;

177.4. Rental of the original or a copy of an audiovisual or cinematographic work, a work embodied in a sound recording, a computer program, a compilation of data and other materials or a musical work in graphic form, irrespective of the ownership of the original or the copy which is the subject of the rental; (n)

177.5. Public display of the original or a copy of the work;

177.6. Public performance of the work; and

177.7. Other communication to the public of the work. (Sec. 5, P. D. No. 49a)

Section 178. Rules on Copyright Ownership. -
Copyright ownership shall be governed by the following rules:

178.1 Subject to the provisions of this section, in the case of original literary and artistic works, copyright shall belong to the author of the work;

178.2. In the case of works of joint authorship, the co-authors shall be the original owners of the copyright and in the absence of agreement, their rights shall be governed by the rules on co-ownership. If, however, a work of joint authorship consists of parts that can be used separately and the author of each part can be identified, the author of each part shall be the original owner of the copyright in the part that he has created;

178.3. In the case of work created by an author during and in the course of his employment, the copyright shall belong to:

(a) The employee, if the creation of the object of copyright is not a part of his regular duties even if the employee uses the time, facilities and materials of the employer.

(b) The employer, if the work is the result of the performance of his regularly-assigned duties, unless there is an agreement, express or implied, to the contrary.

178.4. In the case of a work commissioned by a person other than an employer of the author and who pays for it and the work is made in pursuance of the commission, the person who so commissioned the work shall have ownership of the work, but the copyright thereto shall remain with the creator, unless there is a written stipulation to the contrary;

Section 185. Fair Use of a Copyrighted Work.
185.1. The fair use of a copyrighted work for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching including multiple copies for classroom use, scholarship, research, and similar purposes is not an infringement of copyright. Decompilation, which is understood here to be the reproduction of the code and translation of the forms of the computer program to achieve the inter-operability of an independently created computer program with other programs may also constitute fair use. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is fair use, the factors to be considered shall include:

(a) The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes;

(b) The nature of the copyrighted work;

(c) The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(d) The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

185.2. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not by itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Section 187. Reproduction of Published Work.
187.1. Notwithstanding the provision of Section 177, and subject to the provisions of Subsection 187.2, the private reproduction of a published work in a single copy, where the reproduction is made by a natural person exclusively for research and private study, shall be permitted, without the authorization of the owner of copyright in the work.

187.2. The permission granted under Subsection 187.1 shall not extend to the reproduction of:

(a) A work of architecture in the form of building or other construction;

(b) An entire book, or a substantial part thereof, or of a musical work in graphic form by reprographic means;

(c) A compilation of data and other materials;

(d) A computer program except as provided in Section 189; and

(e) Any work in cases where reproduction would unreasonably conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or would otherwise unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author. (n)

Section 189. Reproduction of Computer Program.
189.1. Notwithstanding the provisions of Section 177, the reproduction in one (1) back-up copy or adaptation of a computer program shall be permitted, without the authorization of the author of, or other owner of copyright in, a computer program, by the lawful owner of that computer program: Provided, That the copy or adaptation is necessary for:

(a) The use of the computer program in conjunction with a computer for the purpose, and to the extent, for which the computer program has been obtained; and

(b) Archival purposes, and, for the replacement of the lawfully owned copy of the computer program in the event that the lawfully obtained copy of the computer program is lost, destroyed or rendered unusable.

189.2. No copy or adaptation mentioned in this Section shall be used for any purpose other than the ones determined in this Section, and any such copy or adaptation shall be destroyed in the event that continued possession of the copy of the computer program ceases to be lawful.

189.3. This provision shall be without prejudice to the application of Section 185 whenever appropriate. (n)

Section 193. Scope of Moral Rights.
The author of a work shall, independently of the economic rights in Section 177 or the grant of an assignment or license with respect to such right, have the right:

193.1. To require that the authorship of the works be attributed to him, in particular, the right that his name, as far as practicable, be indicated in a prominent way on the copies, and in connection with the public use of his work;

193.2. To make any alterations of his work prior to, or to withhold it from publication;

193.3. To object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, his work which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation; and

193.4. To restrain the use of his name with respect to any work not of his own creation or in a distorted version of his work. (Sec. 34, P.D. No. 49)

Thursday, November 20, 2014

PhD Qualifying Exam

I took the qualifying exam last November 17. Actually I have no idea what the exam is all about. They say that the exam will test if I am ready to move forward towards the PhD. I also asked my adviser what to prepare for the exam. He just wanted me to present the paper I submitted for NCITE 2014 then be ready to answer any question related or not to my research. One of my committee member asked me on what skills do I still need to have in order to proceed to my PhD. My adviser asked me what I think will be the challenging part of my study. I found it difficult to answer these questions but gave them the best answer I can. Luckily I was able to convince them and they gave me the go signal to proceed. I am now officially a PhD candidate!

Monday, July 9, 2012

Teaching Load Credit Computation

(Notes from Prof. Marge Paterno)
In summary:
      * Course credits (CC) for labs is 1.0 only (to be used for column 8 only)
        while Teaching Load Credits (TLC) for labs is 1.5 (to be used for the
        last column)
      * CC is equal to TLC in the case of lectures, lect/discussion classes and
        SP
      * For the last column, apply the multipliers on the Teaching Load Credits
        (TLC) rather than on Course Credits (CC).

*For column #8 for COURSE CREDITS (CC) without multipliers:
                           Lab: CC = 1.0
                Lect (2hrs/wk): CC = 2.0
     Lect/Discussion (3hrs/wk): CC = 3.0
              CMSC 190 1 unit : CC = 1.0
              CMSC 190 2 units: CC = 2.0

*For column #10 (last column) for TEACHING LOAD CREDITS with 
MULTIPLIERS
(TLCM):

     STEP 1: Determine TEACHING LOAD CREDITS w/o multipliers (TLC):
                           Lab: TLC = 1.5
                Lect (2hrs/wk): TLC = 2.0
     Lect/Discussion (3hrs/wk): TLC = 3.0
              CMSC 190 1 unit : TLC = 1.0
              CMSC 190 2 units: TLC = 2.0

     STEP 2: Apply corresponding multiplier to TLC to obtain TLCM:

       *** For UNDERGRAD courses:
           Lab class (any number of students):
             TLCM = TLC (i.e., no multiplier)

           Lect (2hrs/wk) or Lect/Discussion (3hrs/wk):
             # of students <=40:  TLCM = TLC
             # of students  >40:  TLCM = TLC*[(# of students - 40)/120 + 1]
            [# of students >160:  TLCM = TLC*2.0]

           For CMSC 190
             TLCM = TLC*(# of students)*(0.5/3)

            // Hence, for 190(1 unit) : TLCM = n/2 * 1/3, maximum of 3 units
            //        for 190(2 units): TLCM = n/2 * 2/3, maximum of 3 units

           For IT 1 Lecture only (if # of students >= 25)
             multiply TLCM further by 1.33  // multiplier for GE lecture courses

       *** For GRAD courses:
           Lect or Lect/Discussion or Lab
             # of students <= 4:        TLCM = TLC
             # of students >4 and <= 9: TLCM = TLC*1.25
             # of students >9:          TLCM = TLC*1.5