Online Training Management System

Abstract

Dubai Aluminum Co. Ltd (Dubai) runs its own training center under the Human Resources and Organizational Effectiveness (HROE) division. The National Program Maintenance Department is one of the departments of Dubai under the HROE wherein the United Arab Emirates nationals are trained in the Pre-Employment Course (PEC) to become plant technicians handling mechanical, electrical and instrumentation aspects of operations. The PEC is an initiative under the nationalization program of UAE. Now on its 27th year of operation, the training center still uses the manual recording system for day-to-day operational concerns such as attendance, assessment, resource records, training presentations and other information related to the trainees.

Presently all these documents and information are recorded using Microsoft Office systems (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), and most of the time, are difficult to retrieve because some of the records are not stored in the central database. In the past years, there have been several attempts to used commercial database systems. The proposal however could not be customized to fit the requirements. Another attempt was again initiated using Microsoft ACCESS to create the database. That attempt, too, did not succeed.

In order to solve the problem, the Online Training Monitoring System (OTMS) was proposed. This project aimed to monitor trainees’ daily attendance record and assessment, as well as trainees’ workbook database, instructors’ resource materials, and presentations.

The database created in OTMS was aimed at providing a system that department managers could use during the quarterly review meetings when they need to decide or act on recommendations regarding the progress of the trainee who are on apprenticeship. Moreover, retrieval of trainees’ records would be much easier and quicker than when hard copies are used. With the project, a more accurate, reliable and immediately available information that could guide actions and recommendations has been made available.

The analysis and design of the proposed project used the modified version of the Waterfall Method wherein verification and validation were conducted as testing process and not separate phases. Rather, they were done continuously throughout the software development as describe in (http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~csonline/SE/Lessons/Waterfall/Lesson.html#refs#refs)

Reports generated by OTMS were checked and verified from the old Microsoft Excel files and from the individual records kept by individual instructors.