"To create a single authoritative national database with millions of learner education records requires effective integration of data from a multiplicity of sources," says National Learners` Records Database (NLRD) Director Yvonne Shapiro. "The South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) took an important step towards this goal with the roll-out of Praxis Edu.Dex software to all our registered Education and Training Quality Assurers last week."
The NLRD already has tens of millions of records of educational achievement for over five million learners in SA, with lots more still to be submitted, consolidated and authenticated.
"These records are in information systems somewhere in SA," says Shapiro, "but while each set of data meets the needs of one of the diverse education and training functions in our country, each system captures the data in a slightly different form making integration difficult. What Edu.Dex does is to enable fast, accurate checking and transfer of data from a variety of different systems so that we can assemble them all reliably in one place."
Prior to the Edu.Dex software roll-out, the cumbersome alternatives were either manual checking of data or the centralised checking at SAQA (using Edu.Dex) of huge swathes of data submitted by Education and Training Quality Assurers (ETQAs). Up till now this has resulted in a high rejection rate and long delays in achieving the required data integration. With the new arrangement, any ETQA will be able to "pre-flight test" its data and get detailed and intelligent feedback from Edu.Dex as to exactly what needs to be changed or fixed to meet the SAQA specification.
The new facility was set up when SAQA purchased an enterprise licence for Praxis Edu.Dex, enabling it to distribute the software to all registered ETQAs at no additional cost for them to self-check all their data submissions. "This is a vote of confidence in the Praxis software," says Edu.Dex product manager at Praxis Computing, Kirstin Barth, noting that SAQA has been using Edu.Dex internally for the last two years.
Problems of data transfer, validation and integration go far beyond file layouts and content issues like text appearing in numeric fields and vice versa, according to Praxis. Common problems in real life applications include duplication of information in slightly different forms from different sources, that is hard to detect with less sophisticated tools.
"Edu.Dex is a powerful, easy to use and flexible utility that is widely used to enable effective data transfers between disparate computer systems, handling business logic questions as well as technical and content checking," says Barth.
For more about Edu.Dex and the work of Praxis and SAQA, please visit www.praxis.co.za/edudex, www.saqa.org.za, or contact the representatives below.
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The South African Qualifications Authority is the national body tasked with overseeing the development and implementation of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). The NQF is a set of principles and guidelines by which records of learner achievement are registered to enable national recognition of acquired skills and knowledge, thereby ensuring an integrated system that encourages life-long learning.
Praxis Computing
Praxis Computing is a Johannesburg-based software and IT services specialist that takes IT strategy into thoroughly practical implementation. Praxis develops smart software as well as implementing integrated information systems using its own and packaged software as building blocks. The company serves the entire information systems area from IT strategy and system design through to development, implementation and ongoing support.
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