Since 1921, the Mexican Ministry of Public Education (SEP) has been responsible for administering the different levels of education, with the essential purpose of creating conditions that ensure the access of all mexicans to quality education at the level and modality that requires it (^{SEP, 2011}). In the upper level, the Mexican Federal Government has implemented various strategies, in 1978 appeared the Law for the Coordination of Higher Education, published in the Official Gazette of the Federation (^{LCES, 1978}).

In 1987 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was established, with a series of rules concerning the quality of products and named ISO 9000 (^{García-Cue et al., 2015}), in 2001 the council ISO established a workshop entitled “International Workshop Agreement (IWA)” for the application of ISO 9001: 2000 in education with a focus on Mexico (^{Sánchez-Rodríguez, 2011}). In 1991, the interinstitutional committees for the evaluation of higher education (CIEES) were established for the Assurance of the quality of mexican higher education (^{CIEES, 2014}).

The highest authority at present of the CIEES is its assembly constituted by the Undersecretariat of Higher Education of the SEP, the National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education of the Mexican Republic, AC (ANUIES), the Federation of Mexican Institutions Particular de Higher Education, AC (FIMPES), among others. The CIEES offers specialized services in standardization, testing, evaluation and certification based on the parameters set by the ISO and proper for Mexico (^{IMNC, 2013}).

In 2000, the Council for the Accreditation of Higher Education (COPAES) was established, which is the only body endorsed by the SEP, to grant accreditation for academic programs of higher education, or, to put it somehow, it functions as the “accrediting the accreditors” (^{COPAES, 2014}). The SEP, through national coordination for higher education planning, supported by CONAEVA and ANUIES, established that the promotion and evaluation of the quality of higher education academic programs should be done through specialized agencies, which made it necessary to establish bodies for each professional branch that meet the social demands and educational policies established by the SEP (^{COMEAA, 2013}).

An example of these organisms was the Mexican Association of Higher Agricultural Education AC (AMEAS), which, in agreement with the CIEES agricultural science committee, promoted the mexican committee for the accreditation of agronomic education, AC (COMEAA). A non-governmental accrediting organization recognized by COPAES in 2002, with the objective of accrediting higher education academic programs in the areas of agronomy, forestry, zootechnics and agro-industries (^{CIEES, 2014}).

A particular case of the institutions that make use of various accreditations of their academic programs is that of the Autonomous University Chapingo (UACH) of Mexico -an institution focused on the agricultural sciences- that uses different instruments to evaluate the quality of its 22 academic units through five accrediting agencies and in their postgraduate studies through the National Quality Graduate Program (PNPC) of the National Council of Science and Technology -CONACYT (^{Rueda and Victorino, 2009}). The academic unit of phytotechnology (UAF), one of the 22 academic units of the UACH, obtained accreditation of its academic program of Agricultural Engineering Phytotechnology (IAEF) through COMEAA in May 2005, with a validity of 5 years, through a process of self-evaluation, so in May 2011 was requested to develop the re-accreditation process and in October 2011 was endorsed until October 16, 2016 (^{Fitotecnia, 2014}).

The COMEAA instrument that uses the UAF consists of 12 sections: i) normativity and general policies; ii) academic-administrative management of the program; iii) planning-evaluation; iv) educational model and curriculum; v) students; vi) academic staff; vii) student support services; viii) facilities, equipment and services; ix) importance of the program; x) academic productivity in teaching; xi) academic productivity in research; and xii) linkage with the sectors of society (^{Rueda and Victorino, 2009}). The process of filling the sections is done in a craft way and is produced by responsible managers, teachers and administrators; it is integrated and validated by a quality assurance committee of the UAF.

The information is made by hand and different supporting documents are added in different formats (doc, pdf, jpg, etc) as well as diverse information coming from different institutional databases that are only delivered to the UAF in the form of reports. A computer system is proposed to support the automation of the COMEAA self-evaluation process, which is scheduled for 2016. To begin, a next step was the analysis of needs, through the opinions of managers, teachers, students and administrative workers of the UAF on the procedure for the quality of their academic unit through the implementation of COMEAA, meeting them in a group in November 2014.

The results of this meeting highlights the non-existence of the automated procedure with web access, through a computer and the need to do so. The following research question: What characteristics should a computer system that serves as a tool to integrate the information requested by COMEAA for the Academic Unit of Phytotechnology (UAF) of the Autonomous University Chapingo (UACH)?, In order to answer the question a research was proposed that had as objective to propose an Agricultural Educational Quality Management System (SIGCEA) to serve as a support in the process of accreditation to the COMEAA of the Academic Program Agricultural Engineer, Specialist in Phytotechnology of the UAF and of UACH and also to identify some tendencies that contribute in plans of continuous improvement.

In order to comply with this, a computer system was proposed through an interface that manages different relational databases, with Data Warehouse applications that help to speed up the compilation, systematization and analysis of information required by COMEAA in its terms of reference and allows you to see the trends that the UAF has through reports or data mining processes.

Metodología

The system design was based on different models used to build applied to education and software based on concepts and best practices of software engineering such -as the ^{Lawrence-Pfleenger and Atlee (2010)}, ^{Peña-Ayala (2006)}, ^{Alonso et al. (2005)}- the different phases for the development of SIGCEA are:

Phase 1. Definition of the problem: an analysis of the COMEAA instrument and of each one of its categories that included all the information quantitative as well as qualitative. Afterwards, we were carried out the information and accreditation process that followed the academic unit of phytotechnology (UAF) for COMEAA. Later, the most recent self-assessment report was verified through the Quality Assurance Committee (CAC) of the UAF. The information obtained by the Autonomous University Chapingo (UACH) was then obtained to comply with the COMEAA and the opinions of managers, teachers, students and administrators were taken into account.

Phase 2. Analysis of the system and its requirements: It was detected that the academic unit of phytotechnology (UAF) has the need to have a web-based computer system to obtain, process and deliver reliable information that contributes to the accreditation processes required by COMEAA, in addition, through its reports, identify trends that serve the plans for continuous improvement that help maintain the quality of the educational program of Agricultural Engineering Specialist in Phytotechnology (IAEF) of the UAF.

Phase 3. Design: We proposed a general diagram and the architecture that will have the computer system (Figure 1). Of the architecture stands out:

Figure 1 General diagram of SIGCEA (left) and architecture (right).  

Users. Teachers, students, secretaries and administrative staff of the academic unit of phytotechnology that can access the system and that can also make, drop, change, delete and consult information from the database for COMEAA.

Interfaces. Computer programs by which the user communicates with SIGCEA via the web.

Database. Based on ^{Camps-Pare (2002)} and has the information to prepare COMEAA reports. We considered the relational model and the use of open source software for its elaboration and LINUX platform.

Data warehouse. Based on ^{Kimbal and Ross (2002)}; ^{Charte (2012)}. It was proposed to work under MS SQL Server 2012 on Windows exporting the data from MySQL. We took advantage of the nature of the data warehouse to handle more accurate information for the creation of reports for COMEAA. Also, the data mining capabilities of MS SQL Server 2012 were used to identify trends in the data.

Phase 4. Construction. The general structure of the system was considered according to the one proposed in Figure 1. Afterwards, software was installed to work under LINUX and Windows which consisted of an Apache Server, MySQL and MS SQL Server 2012, among other tools. Later on, the databases and the relationships between the tables were elaborated. Next, the interfaces were programmed to access the databases, that is, to be able to perform: upload, download, change and delete data with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery and JQueryU and CakePHP Framework. Later, the reports of the databases were generated according to the COMEAA with CakePHP Framework, after the export of the data of Linux platform to the Platform Windows and of MySQL to SQL Server was made to elaborate the Data warehouse from the data source of the original DB in MySQL with information requested by COMEAA.

Afterwards, the data were transformed (cleaning, combining, homogenizing units of measurement, code equivalences, among other things). The Data Warehouse was then “targeted” or detailed with the information required by COMEAA. Later, cubes composed of a single DB, by multiple (data mart) or by both were elaborated. Subsequently, tests were carried out to construct the information requested by COMEAA (reports, graphs, dynamic Excel tables, among others). Data mining algorithms, especially decision trees and trends network, were tested later in MS SQL Server 2012 tools to identify trends in COMEAA data.

Phase 5. Implementation. In this phase the results of the implementation of one of the parts of the SIGCEA, that is, of the category V and students of the COMEAA are shown. To begin, a database was created consisting of 38 main tables in a relational schema, 1 diagram, 1 schema, 45 indices and 37 main keys. Next, the navigation map of the SIGCEA interface was proposed (Figure 2). In the map you can distinguish the different options that can be accessed by different users of the system: administrator, quality committee, students, teachers and administrative staff.SIGCEA clearly defines the actions that users can take, ie, highs, lows, changes to the database and in some cases the reports of each of the categories of COMEAA.

Figure 2 System navigation map.  

In the Figure 3 shows some windows of the programmed interfaces. It also shows the reports that are carried out through the database and the data warehouse, as well as the trends through decision tree and dependency network.

Figure 3 Interfaces, reports, trends by decision tree and dependency network.