Managing Student Affairs With Perl at the University of Papua New Guinea

Overview

In 1999, the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) restructured its academic year from two semesters per year to three trimesters, with a week between each term. The change in the academic calendar led the School of Natural and Physical Sciences (SNPS) to re-evaluate the data entry process for student records, which was done largely by hand, using Excel. The Breeze project begun in SNPS in March 2001 was created to explore alternatives to the manual data entry process. Perl, through Project Breeze, has made it possible for the SNPS at the UPNG, to accommodate the new academic calendar while handling the affairs of its students with far more accuracy and efficiency.