CloudPES: Cloud Portal of Educational Services for Higher Education Institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

Globally, access to adequate funding by the Management of HEIs tops the list of challenges hampering the deployment of IT infrastructure and services that can efficiently drive various educational services of HEIs. This in turn affects the quality of both academic and administrative service delivery and the nation's economy. Therefore, the need to adopt a cloud portal of educational services (CloudPES), a cut-edge and low cost emerging IT service model is inevitable. This paper introduces a conceptual framework of CloudPES that describes a multi-tenant cloud portal where various educational services can be fully automated and integrated. With the use of explorative research method and object oriented analysis and design, fourteen different independent cloud applications as SaaS on deployment model of community cloud are presented for individual HEIs to subscribe. These applications are to automate educational services that can be rendered to/by staff; students; parents; management; and other stakeholders. CloudPES prototypes of the database design with its GUI implementation, checklist criteria for subscription of cloud applications and adoption benefits to HEIs are provided. The benefits of CloudPES to HEIs will include among others cost of software ownership reduction, increased return on investment, improved efficiency and productivity, high quality of educational service delivery, scalability, provision of secured source of big data analytics for research and decision making. As an example of software as a service (SaaS) that can run on community cloud of HEIs in Nigeria, subscription of CloudPES by HEIs in Nigeria is capable of revolutionizing and transforming HEIs into smart institutions.