Abstract—Applying information technology to facilitate administrative tasks in higher education has been done for a long time. At the early stage, e-administration was PC-based and spread over different offices, and each office had to build its own database. Later on, e-administration evolved as a web based administration (abbreviated as WBA hereafter) that was done by integrated computer systems so that different offices can share common databases. Both PC-based and web-based administration system are database-driven with an aim to save labor, cost and time. The aim of this paper is to investigate the possibility of advancing the current WBA further to support the administrators’ decision making in higher education. We took a case study approach to analyze the current tasks accomplished by the WBA in a private university in the eastern part of Taiwan, and we investigated its implementation, advantages and problems. Then, we used prototyping method to illustrate an analysis-based e-administration system to support the Dean of Office of Academic Affair (abbreviated as DOAA) in decision making. The result of this study is a primitive analysis-based e-administration system design regarding to Office of Academic Affairs that provided the critical information for DOAA to recognize and rectify problems. The long-term enrollment rate, teaching evaluation, failure rate, registration rate, dropout rate, and graduation rate among five departments in a popular college shown in the graph format over six years help the DOAA see the trends, the signal of problems, and help him/her to make better decisions.

Index Terms—data-based e-administration, analysis-based e-administration, tactic knowledge, university administrator, decision making.

Ching-Dar Lin is with the Office of Academic Affairs and a Professor of Graduate Institute of Education, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan. (Email: abcd1812@mail.tcu.edu.tw). 
Min-Jin Lin is with the Department of Curriculum Design and Human Potential Development, National Dong-Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan (corresponding author, Phone: 886-3-8227106 ext. 1856, Fax: 886-3- 8237283, E-mail: mjhl@mail.ndhu.edu.tw). 
Yen-Hui Liang is with the Office of Academic Affairs, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan. (E-mail: yhliang@mail.tcu.edu.tw).

Cite: Ching-Dar Lin, Min-Jin  Lin,  and  Yen-Hui  Liang,  " A  Move  from  Data-Based  Towards  Analysis-
Based EAdministration System in Higher Education," International  Journal  of  e-Education,  e-Business, 
e-Management and e-Learning vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 144-150, 2011.