By: Moses Lutaaya

The Directorate of Graduate Training is rolling out the Research Management Information systems (RIMS) to efficiently and effectively monitor the academic progress of all graduate students.

“RIMS will be used to track efficiently every stage of activity of graduate studies from course works, research concept to thesis completion.” The Director of Graduate Training, Prof. Julius Kikooma said.

He added, “The RIMS team is here to share developments on the system that are designed to support the agenda of Makerere university. When graduate students enter a given chapter of their research works, their supervisors will automatically receive mail prompts to swiftly handle, give comments and guide the students on the way forward.”

During the roll out training recently at the College of Health Sciences in Mulago, Prof. Kikooma said, “The Directorate of Graduate Training is working in collaboration with Directorate of Innovation, Research and Partnerships (DIRP) and the Directorate of Information Communication and Technology Support (DICTS) to ensure a smooth training to all the schools and colleges. Digitalising the graduate management process is anticipated to increase the number of graduate admissions and completion in the long run.”

“As the three directorates, we sat and reviewed the university graduate strategy and policies around it. We got reviewed policies and procedures approved by the University Senate last year. We no longer have provisional admission letter requirement for our PhD students. It is now full admission straight away and we follow a cohort system of admission for the PhD by research students.” He added.

RIMS is a version of how the Directorate of Graduate Training aims to handle the process of systematic tracking of every point of progress in the entire academic journey of graduate students.

The Directorate of Graduate Training has so far conducted the RIMS training at three Colleges namely; College of Health Sciences (CHS), College of Business and Management Sciences (COBAMS) and College of Natural Sciences (CONAS).

The critical stakeholders on the RIMS value chain include Heads of Departments, College Principals and Deputy Principals, Directors, School Deans, Supervisors as well as Graduate coordinators. “All the above are key actors and must be able to use RIMS in the graduate process, capturing all profiles of students and supervisors and should be able to use it appropriately.” He emphasized.

He said that RIMS will bring all stakeholders on the same page and will be able to adequately troubleshoot any hinderance to progress when course works are done, to dissertation and thesis completion. Makerere university target is to increase its graduate students’ enrollment from 19% to at least 30% in the next five years.

Prof. Bruce James Kirenga, Principal College of Health Sciences welcomed RIMS training saying that this kind of E- learning and supervision tracking is the way to handle graduate studies as it seems to reduce the turn around time for student- supervisor responses.

“Every activity in the graduate students learning journey is monitored swiftly. Whatever the students upload on to the system, supervisors get message pop-ups on their mails, review the works immediately and attach comments for the students to appreciate and manage appropriately.” He said.

Prof. Kirenga added that the audit trail created under RIMS will provide good progressive academic reports and improve the journey to Doctoral studies.

“Heads of Departments are able to see all students in the department, any pending system approvals, observe completion rates and total progressive over view of each student and that the total overview of department performance will be clearly seen under RIMS.” He added.

Dr. Robert Kalyesubula – the Chair. Dept of Physiology, Makerere University College of Health Sciences said RIMS will improve the efficiency of supervisors while handling the graduate students.

“RIMS views all documents and proposals of students. We will be able to observe which supervisor takes long to respond, the number of days they have taken to respond and how long an issue has pended undone at a certain level.”