Abstract: Good Evaluation index and method are essential for smooth development of the construction of Digital Campus. Taking scientific approaches to evaluate and optimize will promote the construction of Digital Campus. This study constructed an AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) evaluate model which consisted of the following five first-grade indices: Infrastructure construction (A1), database construction (A2), administration (A3), application (A4) and operation guarantee (A5). Then judgment matrix was built to computer index weight. The result showed that the decreasing order of the weight of each influential factor of the quality of Digital Campus was A4 (0.43)>A1 (0.25)>A2 (0.16)>A5 (0.10)>A3 (0.06). Finally, a practical multilayer evaluate model was built . This model helps to evaluate digital campus construction in a faster, more accurate and scientific manner. This study also brings promotional values to similar multifactorial evaluation.
INTRODUCTION
Digital campus construction is an important work for schools and part of school construction and talent cultivation. It is significant to improvement of school teaching, scientific research, administration and service. Digitalization at institutions of higher learning achieves higher education by making use of new technical power. Digitalization is a necessary demand for high stage of informationization and indicates transition from technology level to idea level for informationization innovation power. It’s the core and important result for college informationization. At present digital campus construction is a major indicator of comprehensive quality, image and status for colleges. Some colleges and universities at home have been preparing or implementing digital campus construction and made certain achievements. How to properly evaluate the results is not only a concern for these colleges but also evaluation experts of Department of Education.
In recent years, digital campus construction has begun to take shape, along with which comes evaluation study on digital campus construction result. Yan et al. (2004) analyzed characteristics of teaching quality evaluation and provided a solution for teaching quality evaluation system based on campus network by combining dynamic web technology. Zhu et al. (2004) discussed theories and practices concerning digital campus construction which are very helpful to digital campus construction evaluation. Wang and Mu (2012), from the perspectives of intention and need of students, teachers, administration personnel and social employees, analyzed the components and indices for evaluating digital construction of senior professional institutes. Zhou et al. (2006) and Cai and Yang (2005) also proposed an index system for evaluation of digital campus which, however, lightened the weight of main factors due to excessively detailed consideration to factors and too many layers of system. Such evaluation result seems deviated. Jiao (2007) conducted study on benefit of digital campus construction according to cost-benefit theory. This can guide construction of digital campus to some extent but it’s not representative enough by only providing three schools as examples.
In this study, a practical multilayer evaluation model is established on the basis of college digitalization evaluation system by using analytic hierarchy process (Hu, 2010) and fuzzy mathematic theory (Tao et al., 2009). This model and evaluation method can fully represent the main features of human decision-making thinking. Qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis are integrated to describe information as it really is, making learning evaluation scientific and simple.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Step 1: Build evaluation index hierarchy model Selecting a Template. Digital campus (Zhou et al., 2006) is virtual education environment based on digital information and network for collecting, processing, integration, storage, transmission and application of information concerning teaching, scientific research, administration, technological service, life-support services through computer and network, so as to make the best of digital resources.
| Fig. 1: | Digital campus evaluation indices |
A digital space is established through digitalization from environment and resources to application, improve operation efficiency of traditional campus, expand functions, finally realize comprehensive informationalization of education process. For establishing comprehensive administration platform, it is necessary to adhere to guidance of unified planning, implementation by steps, enforced application, resource integration and data share (Tan and Wang, 2011; Tang, 2010). Based on consideration of China Information Development Report, the writer classifies evaluation index system for digital campus into five aspects, namely infrastructure construction, database construction, administration, application and operation guarantee. In this study AHP is used to build hierarchy as shown in Fig. 1.
This model consists of three layers, first, second and third layers are respectively objective layer(digital campus evaluation), standard layer (first-level index), including infrastructure, database construction, administration, application and operation guarantee, indicated, respectively by A(i) (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and index layer (second-level index), indicated by Aij (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; j = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
Step 2: Building of judgment matrix. Building of judgment matrix is a key step for AHP (Cheng and Li, 2010). The process of building is actually a pairwise comparison of elements on the same hierarchy with respect to their priority in sequence. First, compare elements on the criteria hierarchy to one another two at a time and build relative importance judgment matrix; second, compare index factors under each criteria hierarchy to one another two at a time and build relative importance judgment matrix. In order to compare the elements to one another two at a time to get a judgment matrix, Satty’s 1-9 scale method (Saaty, 1994) is going to be used for grading.
| Table 1: | Digital campus evaluation indices primary index judgment matrix G |
| *A1-A5 are respectively first-grade index infrastructure, database construction, administration, application and operation guarantee | |
| Table 2: | Judgment matrix for factors of second-grade index infrastructure (A1) |
| *A11-A13 are second-grade indices under first-grade index infrastructures | |
| Table 3: | Judgment matrix for factors of second-grade index Database construction (A2) |
| *A21-A24 are second-grade indices under first-grade index Database construction | |
| Table 4: | Judgment matrix for factors of second-grade index Administration (A3) |
| *A31-A34 are second-grade indices under first-grade index Administration | |
As a result, primary and secondary judgment matrixes are built, as shown in Table 1-6.
| Table 5: | Judgment matrix for factors of second-grade index Application (A4) |
| *A41-A44 are second-grade indices under first-grade index application | |
| Table 6: | Judgment matrix for factors of second-grade index operation guarantee (A5) |
| *A51-A55 are second-grade indices under first-grade index Operation guarantee | |
| Table 7: | Random consistency index RI |
| *n: Order of matrix | |
| Table 8: | Synthetic weight for digital campus evaluation indices |
Step 3: Solve judgment matrix by using MATLAB software. In this study, MATLAB program is used to accurately complete these calculations in a short period of time. Consistency index CI, random consistency index RI and consistency ratio CR are introduced.
The calculation formula is as follows:
Consistency index:
| (1) |
where, n refers to order of matrix.
Consistency ratio:
| (2) |
The judgment matrix is fully consistent when CR = 0; satisfactory when CR<0.1; the consistency is extremely satisfactory when CR>=0.1. The values of RI are given in Table 7 (Zhang et al., 2011).
Take judgment matrix G as an example, use MATLAB program to calculate the value as follows:
In the judgment matrix G, W = (0.25, 0.16, 0.06, 0.43, 0.10)T, CI = 0.04, CR = 0.04<0.1, all of which meet consistency requirement. The weight of the five factors on the criteria hierarchy is W = (0.25, 0.16, 0.06, 0.43, 0.10)T. The result corresponding to the matrix on the criteria hierarchy can be calculated as follows:
| • | A1-matrix: W = (0.2970, 0.1634, 0.5396)T, CI = 0.0046, CR = 0.0051<0.1 |
| • | A2-matrix: W = (0.4687, 0.2787, 0.1028, 0.1497)T, CI = 0.032093, CR = 0.035659<0.1 |
| • | A3-matrix: W = (0.1547, 0.2879, 0.4765, 0.0810)T, CI = 0.007034, CR = 0.007816<0.1 |
| • | A4-matrix: W = (0.4668, 0.0953, 0.1603, 0.2776)T, CI = 0.01033, CR = 0.01147<0.1 |
| • | A5-matrix: W = (0.1655, 0.2720, 0.3893, 0.1067, 0.0664)T, CI = 0.028608, CR = 0.025543<0.1 |
Step 4: Calculation of synthetic weight.With the above calculations, it can obtain the weight of criteria hierarchy to target hierarchy and weight of index hierarchy to criteria hierarchy. The equation for weight of various index hierarchies to target hierarchy is:
| (3) |
where, A(i) stands for weight of various factors on the criteria hierarchy to target hierarchy; w(Aij) stands for weight of various factors on the index hierarchy to criteria hierarchy (Chen and Chen, 2012). The specific weight for each index is shown in Table 8.
RESULTS
It can be obtained from Table 8 that the decreasing order of the weight of each influential factor is A4 (0.43)>A1 (0.25)>A2 (0.16)>A5 (0.10)>A3 (0.06). During the construction of Digital Campus, application and infrastructure construction are priorities.
The comprehensive evaluation value of digital campus construction can be calculated by the following equation: The equation for primary index evaluation is:
in which Ai stands for evaluation grade of various indices on the criteria hierarchy and Wi stands for absolute weight of various indices.
The equation for secondary index evaluation is:
where, Aij stands for grade for indices corresponding to criteria hierarchy to Ai .The full grade is 100. W(Aij) stands for weight of the index correspond to Aij (Wang and Tan, 2007).
CONCLUSION
This study uses Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to build a practical multi-hierarchy evaluation model and MATLAB software to solve matrix with better efficiency. It helps to evaluate digital campus construction result of a certain university more quickly, accurately and scientifically.