Postgraduate Tracking System: Student Research Progress Tracking Tool

Abstract

The Postgraduate Tracking System (POSTRACKER) has an ambitious goal of providing the ultimate comprehensive students data management and monitoring system for postgraduate research students of an academic institution. The POSTRACKER is completely a unique invention and it is developed to track students’ progress towards graduation (e.g. data on registration, working title, supervisor(s), defence research proposal (DRP), progress to date, Viva-Voce, examiners, deadlines for correction (after Viva-voce), etc.). This automated tracking system is believed to be effective in monitoring the postgraduate research students’ progress and in reducing the amount of time that students take to graduate. Such information made it possible to see if students are achieving their academic goals and administrator could see, as soon as possible, if a student is not progressing. The POSTRACKER is also useful in helping the postgraduate department to plan their educational activities every semester and improve data communication between administrator and the students. In this way, the progress of the students (both in terms of research outputs and educational activities) is frequently monitored and measures such as counseling will be taken if progress is lacking. Close tracking and monitoring of individual student using POSTRACKER is particularly useful for all postgraduate schools in public and private universities especially when all the universities in Malaysia are heading toward the 4-year Graduate on Time (GoT) Phd program.