Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert

System Shell

Kazimierz Kowalski (CS, California State Univ.)

Mahabub Alam (CS, California State Univ.)

Jozef Goetz (Math/Physics/CS, Univ. of La Verne)

Presented by Sharon HSIAONov.20.2006

agenda

Introduction/motivation Expert systems in student advising Advising process, advising system Designing the system with Exsys CORVID conclusion

The NEED for an automated system

Lot of transfer students Student’s availability is limited Many new faculty members Online education

Constraints of Selecting classes

Course prerequisites Actual class openings Degree check requirements Student’s availability

Expert Systems in Student Advising

Early 90s. PC-based expert system, Industrial and System Engin

eering Dept. Ohio University Similar approach, but in LISP. California State Univers

ity Dominguez Hills La Crosse VP-Expert expert system shell, University o

f Wisconsin Exsys expert system shell, CS dept. California State U

niversity Dominguez Hills

Online advising systems Implementation techniques

Client-side scripting: javascript Server-side scripting: active server pages

Web-based interactive student advisement(Tang,Fluker&Zeng,1999)

Applet: Java Michigan Technology univ.(Morrison,2003), Duisburgh Univ. (Wer

ner, at al. 2003), eAdvisor Univ. North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Scotts, 2003)

Expert systems shells Exsys Corvid (Awad, 2002)Complex expert systems techniques to deliver highly effective e

xpert knowledgeGiving students advice online through expert systems

Advising Process

Degree check requirements Student special interests

Structured degree programs Less rigid programs

Taking the course which is the prerequisite for largest number of other courses guarantees the shortest study time

Advising System

Names of departments involved in selected courses within sectionsHas to satisfy the number of units required for sections and categoriesHas to satisfy constraints related to the number of departments involvedStudent’s interests, student’s availability

Goal: automate the student advising process in General Studies Program

Designing the System with Exsys CORVID

Conversation in decision-making process within webpage

Inference engine: analyze and combine individual rules to solve larger problems, to determine what possible answers

Exsys CORVID

Example rule:Which of the following social science

courses have you completed so far?

Then:

[SS] is giving the value [SS]+3

And [FLAG6] is given the value 1

Eg.POL_100&GEO_100

Student’s availability?

Interests?

conclusion

Has been tested for 1 semester, 18 qualifiers, 64 choices(courses), 16 numeric variables, 243 rules

Possibilities: play it real!

Thank you!

Please comment!

“PLANNER WEB”, California State University, Monterey Bayhttp://infoserver.csumb.edu/#planner“Advising Central”, North Carolina University,http://www.ncsu.edu/advising_central/advisers/preprof.html

WERNER, S., HUNGER,A., SCHWARZ, F.&BUZUK, S. (2003)CONGA: A Course Online/Offline Information and Guidance System tosupport an International Degree Course, Proceedings of ICCE 99, Chiba,Japan, 577-583

Hsu, S., Marques, O., Ilyas, M.&Ding, X. (2002) Web-based undergraduate academic advising system, international conference on engineering education, Manchester, UK, 1-6