CUBRAS: DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE COURSE UNIT BASED RESULTS ANALYSIS SYSTEM S. R. Kodituwakku Pathum Chamikara Department of Statistics & computer science University of Peradeniya ABSTRACT With the introduction of the course unit system in the state universities, students’ evaluation process has been transformed into a highly complicated task. In order to evaluate students’ results it is required to check several requirements such as number of credits, compulsory courses, prerequisites and minimum grade point average. Additionally this task needs to be completed quickly and efficiently. This paper presents an information system developed to achieve this task. Salient features of the system include evaluation of students’ results to decide whether students are eligible for a particular degree, for special degree programmes and for honours. Additionally, the system facilitates the online registration of students and automatic transcript generation. The system developed was tested with randomly selected student results. The test results indicated that the system functions accurately and efficiently. Keywords: Unified modelling language, information system, course units, transcript 1. Introduction With the introduction of the course unit system, students are provided with a lot of flexibility in selecting degree programmes. The Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya offers 21 subject combinations. Each combination consists of three major subjects and each subject consists of several course units. Students who are admitted to the faculty enrol for a subject combination. Before commencing the regular academic programme, students have to enrol for three compulsory foundation courses. During the first year each student enrols for three subjects, a combination, and offers a minimum of 24 compulsory credits. During the second year students could enrol for three major subjects or two major subjects and offer a minimum of 27 credits. This includes both compulsory and optional courses. At the end of the second year students could apply for one or more special degree programmes. Those who have satisfied the requirements of such programmes are selected to follow special degree programmes. The others continue towards a general degree. The general and special degree students have to earn a minimum of 90 credits and 120 credits respectively to obtain their degrees. Those who have completed these credit requirements are awarded honours degrees subject to the fulfilment of additional requirements. Therefore, it is essential to analyse students’ results to make sure that they have fulfilled each and every requirement before awarding respective degrees and honours 1 . This is a time consuming and resource wasting task. Usually ten to fifteen academic staff members work for about ten days to finalise results. As a result, the faculty faces difficulties in releasing results on time. Therefore, an alternative approach is required to expedite this process. Corresponding author: salukak@pdn.ac.lk 1