Keywords

1 Introduction

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) refers to research on the interaction between humans and computers, guided by the theoretical knowledge of various disciplines such as computer science, cognitive science, psychology, behavioral science, and sociology. This pioneering technology aims to realize the completion of human-computer interaction and system communication in a convenient and efficient way (Fig. 1).

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HCI

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The development of human-computer interaction, in short, is a discourse from people’s adaption to computer to computer’s gradual adaption to human beings. It has experienced several stages of development, i.e. the early manual operation phase, the job control language and the interactive command language phase, the graphical user interface (GUI) phase, network user interface phase, and multi-channel, multimedia intelligent human-computer interaction phase (Fig. 2).

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HCI interface

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Since the late 1990s, with the rapid development and popularization of high-speed processing chips as well as multimedia technology and Internet Web technologies, HCI research has focused on the intelligent and multi-modal (multi-channel) interaction, such as multimedia interaction, virtual interaction and human-computer interaction, which means its orientation to human-centered human-computer interaction technology (Fig. 3).

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Human-centered human-computer interaction technology

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The HCI implements primarily based on input/output devices and computer software, whose main function is to control the operation of the related devices and executive various commands and requirements. The devices include mostly a keyboard display, a mouse, various pattern recognition machines and so on; yet the corresponding software, the operating system, plays an important part in the HCI function (Fig. 4).

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HCI peripherals

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As With the development of computer technology, more and more operational commands appear and functions are becoming more and more powerful. With the development of input devices for pattern recognition such as speech recognition and Chinese character recognition, it is possible for HCI to perform at a syntactic level like natural language or restricted natural language, which signifies the continuous rapid progress toward intelligent HCI (Fig. 5).

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Artificial intelligence

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At present, human-computer interaction technology has been involved and applied in various fields, constantly affecting the rhythm and mode of our work and life. Meanwhile, people are also keen to have human-computer interaction technology emerged in all aspects of our work and life, not only to form a good partner interaction model, but also to apply human-computer interaction technology as a tool for us to save time and energy, improve efficiency, and ensure quality, so that people can be freed from heavy work and life load and win more time to think and do more meaningful things. The application of human-computer interaction technology in the teaching management of colleges and universities fully demonstrates its importance and positive significance in current times, and it will have a profound impact on the teaching management mode of colleges and universities (Fig. 6).

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Artificial intelligence

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2 The Positive Application of HCI in Educational Management

Compared with the traditional teaching management, HCI educational management is more efficient: the forms are more various, the range much wider, and the modality more flexible and effective. In the educational management of colleges and universities, HCI is mainly performed, through the applicable system software or information platform, for the purpose of the integration and standardization of educational management (Fig. 7).

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Educational administration management information platform

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2.1 System Management

The system management module is the information center of the entire educational management platform, whose main function is to authorize user’s availability to the system for the related fundamental data. The ordinary uses except the administrator don’t obtain the access. Therefore, the system management module is a general commander in control of the planning and coordination of all teaching management programs, that is, the access and authority granted to the teaching management personnel. The HCI between the administrative staff and the system management module maximizes the rigor and uniqueness of permission distribution against the possibility of human-induced errors (Fig. 8).

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System management

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2.2 Student Status Management

The student status management module, used to monitor the student status in the college, can roughly be divided into several parts: class information management, student information management, query class information by term, minor registration management, and student changes major. The system can manage all-around school roll, based on the integration of students’ identity verification and information collection, review targetedly and analyze specifically for varied issues in order to keep better track of student status and dynamic condition (Fig. 9).

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Student status management

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In this way, the educational management staff, with the help of HCI, just clicks the right buttons to give clear instructions for the student status rather than the offline tediousness of collecting, organizing and registering data. Therefore, the system provides the exact and comprehensive data via assembling information at the first time, which facilitates the staff in managing the student status.

2.3 Teaching Plan Management

As the system interactive channel for arranging teaching programs, the teaching program schedule management module mainly includes course library management, curriculum replacement management, training program management, teaching implementation plan, implementation of teaching tasks, task implementation query and calendar management. It is designed to carry out the course arrangement in a step-by-step manner. Each step is very clear and easy to operate. The teaching schedule management is top priority for the educational management. The related staff needs to put 200% of their energy whenever they deal with it, as this complicated work is involved in many interlocking processes. There is little leeway if anything goes wrong: one wrong step may even affect student’s regular graduation in the future. By means of HCI, the educational management staff clarifies the process, follows the displayed interfaces to schedule and double-check the courses orderly, which realizes the human-machine teaching program scheduling in an efficient and orderly way (Fig. 10).

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Teaching plan management

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2.4 Course Arranging Management

The Course arranging management, man-machine co-scheduling the curriculum, is the fullest realization of HCI technology. The module consists of teaching site information, task scheduling, class scheduling initialization, course management, interactive scheduling, other human-computer scheduling, schedule to print, and class situation enquiry. This function is a follow-up work after the teaching plan management function. The former manual curriculum scheduling modality is time-consuming and inefficient, especially considering the high confliction between class schedule and teachers’ availability, which leads to repeated modifications on a basis of the continuously tedious work of educational management staff. The application of the scheduling management module will promptly display the interface for reminding conflicts during the curriculum scheduling course; moreover, it will prohibit operators from continuing the conflict scheduling. Therefore, it successes to avoid the risk that the teaching management staff have no awareness of having arranged the conflicted schedule. In this way, HCI obviously improves efficiency and increases accuracy rather than lots of work in vain (Fig. 11).

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Course arranging management

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2.5 Course Management

The course selection management module aims to help students elect, recover, and retake courses of different types and natures, so as to realize course selection query and credit charging. It is mainly divided into the following sub-items: teaching registration management, course selection task setting, course selection list adjustment, course selection queries, rebuild management, management of course credit collection. Although students are able to freely select courses by instructions of their own course selection system, sometimes it needs the involvement of educational management staff in such circumstances as individual’s failure in selecting within deadline and individual’s unavailability without access due to schooling suspension. With their help, students in special situations are able to select courses, attend classes, take exams, gain credits, and then graduate smoothly. For students, HCI application in course selection management, to a great extent, guarantees the initiativity and fairness of course selection, i.e. who selects first, who gets first; besides, it is free and convenient to adjust their choices within deadline. Meanwhile, regarding the educational management staff, it avoids the potential confliction on scheduling and ensures the accuracy of course selection (Fig. 12).

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Course management

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2.6 Performance Management

The performance management module, composed of record setting management, results the query, grade and credit recognition management, statistical analysis of performance and students performance ranking statistics, offers grade input channel to teachers. It protects privacy of grade input process, that is, the system generates, in response to each teacher and each course, different codes which can be exported. In addition, the educational management staff can monitor student performance via HCI as well, especially engaged in the credit recognition for students with particular situations. They make a statistical analysis on performance data with reference to a class or a major, in order that they are able to get the big picture of student performance status based on the grade distribution for the necessary academic early warning to remind the related students to complete their studies on time (Fig. 13).

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Performance management

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2.7 Examination Management

Examination management module plays an important part in the educational management as well. Nothing can go wrong in the interlocking processes: from the exam hall organization, basic data setting, to release of exam tasks, examination and Invigilation arrangements, and then to exam information inquiry. The following items are involved: examination room information setting, basic examination data, test task management, make-up examination management, security management, centralized test scheduling management, decentralized test scheduling management, arrange test list management, and examination information query. Concerning the past manual examination arrangement, operated by the educational management staff, it is inevitable to omit examination arrangement in response to certain courses and overlapped schedules of invigilators. It is barely ensured to avoid mistakes despite of double check. The current HCI examination management system manages to improve the accuracy of examination management thanks to the mutual cooperation and supervision between manpower and computer. Once the inconsistency appears, the operator is alarmed promptly for the immediate rectification. Moreover, the functional development of examination information inquiry means that the educational management staff do not have to manually fill in the exam admission ticket and registration form of exam circumstance; instead, both students and invigilators can query online the information needed in respective systems. Therefore, the HCI facilitates not only the educational management staff, but also teachers and students (Fig. 14).

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Examination management

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2.8 Graduation Project (Thesis) Management

The graduation project (thesis) management module, for the consistency of managing students’ graduation projects, is sectioned in graduation project control, supervisor management, project management, subject to monitor, task management, process management, defense management, performance management and excellent graduation thesis. It is designed for educational management staff to timely monitor the entire graduation process step by step, in the way that students, under the instruction of tutors, follow up with all the requirements, meet the credit standards, and finally gained the graduation qualification. The HCI successfully replaces the former modality, in which educational management staff needs to load so tedious work during the graduation period as offline thorough investigation, continuous tracking and consistent reminding. Therefore, it improves actual effect and mechanism so as to proceed the graduation smoothly with high standards (Fig. 15).

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Graduation project management

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2.9 Graduation Management

The graduation management module divided into three functions: academic early warning management, graduation qualification examination and result printing, aims to master the learning situation, confirm the graduation qualification and final performance presentation. It is the final teaching management work at the end of each semester. Through the HCI system, the teaching management staff can conduct data surveys on the students’ academic completion status based on semester or academic year, and then figure out and alert the students whose grades are not qualified. Early warning enables students to pay attention to learning without missing exams needed to be retaken or courses needed to be restudied in case of graduation unqualification. After verification, the educational management staff filtrate students without graduation qualification, who, off-campus, are notified to apply for completion or extension with the procedure and return to retake the examination in the next semester for the supplementary graduation certificate and bachelor’s degree with the qualified transcript. Therefore, for educational management staff, the HCI initiates the intelligent modality of credit calculation, instead of the former way to audit manually each undergraduate’s transcript with the print version. It hence improves the standardization and operability of graduation process for the smooth implementation (Fig. 16).

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Graduation management

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2.10 Teaching Material Management

The teaching material management module, as the name implies, is the uniform subscription and management of the textbooks used by teachers and students. It is divided into basic information management, curriculum material management, textbook subscription management, textbook storage management, textbook stock-out management and textbook settlement management. The HCI in this module has greatly improved the qualification of subscription for the final selection of the most suitable teaching materials. Compared with the former modality to find out the accordance with the course content only after the usage of textbook, the intelligent system manages to filtrate a collection of good teaching materials appropriate to both teachers and students. Teaching management staff can interact with the system and select certain suitable teaching materials for the teachers to preview first, until they find the most satisfactory version, and then recommend them to students. In this way, it not only saves a lot of invalid expenses, but optimizes the approach on the subscription, which favors any party and ensures teaching quality for the good teaching effectiveness (Fig. 17).

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Teaching material management

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2.11 Teacher Management

Teacher management module functions mainly for routine maintenance management in terms of teacher resources and related information, such as their identity, title, employee ID number, affiliate they belongs to, and other basic information. For retired teachers, the educational management staff needs to note in the system as “retired” without access any longer to the system assigned by administrators. For newly recruited teachers, the operator should promptly enter all the basic information in the system in order to facilitate the follow-up teaching work. As for educational management staff, the HCI approach thus greatly improves the operating mode to acquire and monitor the specific status relating to the teachers, which conducts data storage and extraction conveniently, quickly and efficiently, and fully guarantees the integrity and accuracy of the teacher information.

The application of HCI has prevailed in the educational management at colleges and universities because of those advantages as stated above. It is a good opportunity for colleges and universities to develop rapidly their educational management. On the basis of the HCI platform, they can consistently realize more satisfactory effects in accordance with user requirements by means of more command and instructions, and consequently make educational management more systematic, and effective reduce teaching costs, improve teaching quality for the better service of education and management (Fig. 18).

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Teacher management

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3 The Deficiency of HCI Application in the Educational Management

Despite the fact that the HCI application in the educational management at colleges and universities has achieved remarkable results in good trends, there are also certain deficiencies in the actual operating experience. These incompleteness more or less affects the effectiveness of HCI. The restraint and even confusion occur occasionally when the staff give operating instructions, which obviously impacts work and application experience.

3.1 The Instability of HCI System

In actual use, the educational management staff encounter some stability issues of HCI system, which limits the access and further work of progress. Sometimes they are even forced to shut down the work in process and delay it behind schedule. For example, they often experience the access control problems: they need to constantly change various input channels with uncertain outcome, which costs lots of time and causes their mental stress. Even if they enter the system, they have got to receive passively the different access in compliance with different input address, i.e. in terms of the same module, it functions with this address, yet it fails with another one; consequently they have to repeatedly change addresses and consistently log in and out for the same module. It brings a lot of trouble and leads to the daily work time-consuming and inefficiency. In addition, the educational management staff also confront the confusing situation that when double check, they find the input data has changed automatically after the assignment; they somehow have got to delete the wrong data and re-enter them, however, the re-entry is not guaranteed to be absolutely correct after submission. In this case, it brings the staff lots of efforts in vain and much inconvenience.

3.2 Uncertainty of HCI System

Meanwhile, the staff find some uncertainties of the HCI system in the actual use as well, which make them too puzzles to confirm the accuracy of the work. For example, when engaged in reviewing student performance and credits, the educational management staff fell overwhelmed by varied sets of data because various data are scatted in different modules or sections, and different sets of data displays in correspondence with diverse output modes of the modules or sections. In the end, the only way to resolve is the mutual check of data between the educational management system and student’s own system for the final confirmation. However, here comes the new problem: the data presentation relating to teaching programs in student system is inconsistent with that of staff’s system, which causes eventually the unavailability to check mutually. As for the educational management staff, these uncertainties have brought great inconvenience to the performance review and credit review, which has increased a lot of work in vain ineffective, without eventual certainty of the accurate and satisfactory results.

3.3 Disnormativity of HCI System

The disnormativity of HCI system consists in the actual use as well, which leads to inconvenience and work delay. Take the humanized dysfunction of the module for instance. The failure in exporting data and displaying for sequence causes the staff to search the required data in a disorderly manner. Even if the data could be automatically sorted in the system, the exported data is still arranged in a mixed manner without any rule. In the end, the staff need to manually sort the data to review the relevant data clearly. Furthermore, the disnormativity of the system also lies in the unavailability to operate and modify data in terms of certain special case or segment. The data has to be submitted, returned, or deleted as a unit, thus altering a datum means to change the entire data as the system requires. The educational management staff, therefore, have to bear heavy workload. The disnormativity of design module in the system reflects the limitation of designer’s concept of the HCI system with little experience, which brings such troubles to the educational management, that the staff fail to experience the comprehensiveness and meticulousness of the application modules against the application experience.

4 The Fundamental Principles and New Requirements of Application Experience of HCI Needed to be Followed in the Educational Management

For the good future of HCI technology in the educational management at universities over against the current inadequateness, it should bear human-centered design concept and practical operation for the user-friendly and available experience as the fundamental design principles.

Humanization of the HCI system plays a crucial role in the friendliness and availability of computer system. In compliance with ergonomic philosophy, the system engineers should focus on the human-centered compatibility between human and computer, otherwise it is hard to reach the satisfactory human-computer interactive results for the comfortable application experience. Meanwhile, we must also take into account that ergonomics does not negate training, although it is the desire of teaching management workers to avoid training. However, whether it can be fully realized is not determined by our subjective will. The purpose, characteristics, occasions and implementation cost of the management task determine the natural procedures that HCI human-computer interaction should achieve. This is the true meaning of being human-centered and it will enhances the practical operability of the interactive system.

Therefore, the “people-centered” design concept is the basis and premise for enhancing the friendliness and usability of the computer system. Only with the humanized design can the function of the computer system be optimized, and its operational function can be more practical, producing perfect interaction effect with half the effort. This is a new problem facing university teaching management personnel in the HCI human-computer interaction technology experience.

5 The Promising Prospects of HCI Technology in the Educational Management

Although HCI technology is still in a stage of gradual development, and there is large space for improvement, its development prospects are still very encouraging. The ideal HCI mode is “user freedom”, which means the computer is mainly directly manipulated and partially controlled by command language, especially natural language. Therefore, HCI technology still has a very broad development space and a good development potential in the teaching management application of colleges and universities. University administrators can take “user freedom” as the next development goal, gradually realize the upgrade function of each module in the system, and finally achieve the independence and intelligence of the entire system, so that the teaching management staff can liberate their hands and command by voice, which saves time, effort and management costs. Thereby, the teaching management work will be more standardized, systematic and efficient.

Playing a key role in the teaching management of colleges and universities the HCI system forms a tight connection with the teaching management workers as a partner and as well as a comrade-in-arms. They undertake the teaching management work cooperatively and overcome the difficulties together, which created an unbreakable friendship between human and computers. There is enough reason to believe that HCI technology will surely be more comprehensive, powerful and perfect in cooperating with people’s daily life, and enter into the era of intelligence with broader development space and the fastest speed.