Electrical Engineering Department Advising for Course Planning

Mohammad Shakeel Laghari Department of Electrical Engineering

United Arab Emirates University Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

mslaghari@uaeu.ac.ae

Gulzar Ali Khuwaja Department of Computer Engineering

King Faisal University Al Ahsa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

khuwaja@kfu.edu.sa

Abstract— Student course registration is an important as well as a trivial process to ensure a student to fulfill the degree requirements of a university in a comprehensive and structured way and without encountering unnecessary delays. Most universities in the world spend a substantial amount of money for bespoke advising & registration programs to suit their needs. United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) is one such institution where students have faced problems because they are careless and the lack of a proper advising system. A Student Advising Software (SAS) is devised in this regard. SAS is developed using Java computer programming language. The system helps and guide students in selecting appropriate courses suitable to register online with the Banner University Registration System. The outcome of the course selection is stored (semester-wise) in a file to show a complete typical plan.

Keywords- advising; course planning; software package; JAVA

I. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of the registration process at an academic institution has been mainly to determine which students will be taking courses within the university, and for the administration to keep its records up-to-date. From the students’ point of view, the registration process enables them to acquire the necessary authorized membership of the university and to obtain their legal and authorized benefits and privileges. It is typical that students register for particular courses or modules and this registration information is used to construct class lists, and offer other academic and administrative activities.

Students at the Electrical Engineering Department, UAEU, need to consult their Academic Advisers before the start of a registration period. Otherwise, the registration “hold” set in the computer system will not be removed, and they will be denied access to the web based banner registration system. Adversely, this hold to register online is automatically released on the second day of their registration period (due to some administrative issues) even if they fail to consult their Advisers. Therefore, a reasonable number of students never desire or have a chance to visit their Advisers before registration.

There are several reasons for miss out on Advisers; too lazy or careless with time to setup an appointment, busy with other activities for the office hours set by the Adviser, rely on their own ability to choose wisely or on advice from friends, etc.

Most of these lose out students experience with typical advising and registration problems which may include: courses registered without completing prerequisites (this problem is almost resolved with the recent improvements to the banner system), course selection with time conflicts, missed out on specific courses only offered for alternate semesters, selecting department electives bypassing track requirements and restrictions, selection of free electives restricted for specific colleges, selecting too many courses in a specific semester whereas this selection is based on academic warnings and low grade point averages, or too less courses again based on minimum credit hour requirements and grade point averages, etc.

Students in some of these categories suffer with problems such as class expulsion after two or three weeks of the start because of prerequisites requirement, delay graduation because of unnecessary additional taken courses, drop a complete semester because of minimum number of courses requirement, etc. The Student Advising Software system is devised to counter such student advising and registration problems. The advising system helps and guide students in selecting the precise and appropriate courses suitable for online registration with the banner university registration system.

Students can run the advising program through the electrical engineering department computer laboratories and create a typical course selection plan for all the remaining semesters until graduation. The outcome is in the form of semester-wise course selection stored in a file to show a complete typical plan. Work is also in progress to convert the advising Java application program into a Java applet. This completed applet will be mounted on the college web server for students to access the system online.

A typical advising session starts with the student by either using an offline template to create a file of taken courses or creating a list of passed and current registered courses through an online display menu of all department courses. Student is then advised to select courses from another list only eligible for the next semester. After this selection, the student restarts the whole process of course selection with one less semester to be advised for. The selection procedure continues semester by semester until all the degree required courses are chosen.

The paper describes complete procedure of the developed advising package which includes prioritized course selection, course hierarchies, graphical charts, help menus, restrictions, and filing of the complete course plan.

II. NEED FOR COURSE REGISTRATION

Before early nineties, at most of the academic institutions throughout the world, the registration process used to involve student registrations at a single place, where most of the registration related activities were to be performed after the requisite form was filled and processed by the concerned department. This (centralized) single point activity used to generate many concerns for queues, fee payments, query handling and other related issues.

In mid nineties, majority of the well known academic institutions throughout the world started to address this perspective of registration from many different angles including student advising, student course registration, class scheduling, for administrative purposes, etc. Obviously, the objective seemed to produce a highly available application that required working in a distributed environment.

Beginning nineties, institutions throughout the world have seen a rapid expansion of tertiary education. As twenty first century approached, this trend increased nearly doubled. This rapid expansion has an indirect effect on the institution’s enrolment. The average age of prospective students has increased as well as the number of students. As the demand is stabilized so is a need to streamline the registration process that maximizes the allocation of course places and increases the number of registered students.

Additionally, the institutions, in general, have progressed to offer programs that are specialized as well as multidisciplinary. This variety of programs has introduced time conflicts vis-à-vis chosen courses. The required registration system(s) are to be developed to provide on-line real time registration for students and enable students to maximize their opportunities in registering courses of their own interest as well as advising students in completing their degree requirements in a best possible way.

The multidisciplinary nature of modern day universities where faculties and departments can typically number as high as 10 and 50, respectively, course registration systems need to be smart enough to comprehend multiple course selections from different faculties and departments. A decent course advising system in this regard can prevent and resolve such conflicts.

The concept of computerized registration system has been to tolerate machine and network failures. It was hoped that most human errors, such as incorrectly inputting data, would be detected by the system as they occurred, but it was expected that some "off-line" data manipulation would be necessary for errors which had not been foreseen.

Therefore, the success of any attempt to computerize this activity depends on the reliability, availability and integrity of the computer systems, both software and hardware, on which the registration programs are run. Because many of the

departments at any university have most likely made significant investments in computer hardware, it is logical that no specialized hardware is to be purchased and software fault-tolerance is to be used instead. The following section looks at some of similar old and recent advising systems.

III. COURSE ADVISING & REGITRATION SYSTEMS

The PACE advising system is a decision model representation for course advising based on student’s need to know “what to do” and “how to do it”. It consisted of profiling a student’s strengths and weakness, generating a personal curriculum customized to each person’s needs, and producing a schedule for the courses chosen [1].

The advising software at the Electrical Engineering, Texas Tech University featured a graphical user interface, that allowed students to request only courses for which they have appropriate prerequisites, co-requisites, and standing [2]. Similar work has been investigated by the Authors on an old and phased out curriculum [3].

The academics at the Florida Atlantic University developed a Web-based advising system that supplemented the conventional advising process [4].

A Bayesian Network model for planning course registration and advising by using a data mining technique is developed to predict the sequences of courses to be registered by undergraduate students whose majors are computer science or engineering [5].

A SASSY advising system is developed at the Armstrong Atlantic State University. The system suggests courses for an advisee based on; frequency of the course offering, balancing the course load, shortening the path length to graduation, preference of advisee and entertaining different scenarios of course loads for the entire duration of the advisee’s university life [6].

An expert system using JESS (a Java based rule engine and scripting environment) is developed that allows students to seek quick responses to their queries regarding their plan of study and progress in the program [7].

Two project management tools are designed to help the students complete their degree plan sooner. The first tool provides a visualization map of course sequences, customized for each student, making advising adjustments that will optimize the time to obtain the degree under a constrained set of resources. The second tool collects information from multiple students through several semesters and can be used to identify bottlenecks in the curriculum [8].

The Arjuna distributed system was developed at The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Its design aims were to provide tools to assist in the construction of highly available, fault tolerant distributed applications using atomic actions. The authors have discussed the design and implementation of the registration system that successfully met their requirements [9]-[11].

Another development work was completed at the Wylie College IT for software architectural development of a course

registration system using the specifications created for the college requirements. The Software Architecture Document provides an architectural overview of the C-Registration System. The C-Registration System was initiated by Wylie College IT to support online course registration [12]-[15].

As from one advising and registration system to another are browsed, it has been found that specification document is fundamental and key to further develop a customized university course registration. Furthermore, as programs to be offered vary from institution to institution, and at the same time universities continuously revise their curriculum as well as program requirements in order to meet market demands, the flexibility and reliability of the registration system to accommodate such changes in the program offerings has been deemed necessary for such a system to survive and evolve.

Thus, the required development work involves customized design of a network-enabled university student registration system that is capable of handling scenarios such as add/drop requests, student advising, availability of courses per term, student's registration status, enrolment summary, reports, etc.

Furthermore, the devised advising system which is under test phase in the department has shown representational

efficiency and flexibility, improved performance, and ease of software development and maintenance when compared with some of the mentioned systems.

IV. SAS PACKAGE

There are 12,279 students at the UAEU distributed across nine faculties. The student share of Faculty of Engineering (FOE) is 1854 students distributed among five departments. Students from Electrical Engineering Department (200 students) take 168 credit hours to fulfill the requirements for a B.Sc. degree in either of the two tracks of: Electrical Engineering or Communications Engineering. Typically it takes from a minimum of 11 to a maximum of 16 semesters to complete with an average of 15 to 18 credits per semester.

The total of the credit hours is divided into UGRU (University General Requirements Unit) 42 credits, ERU (Engineering Requirements Unit) 41 credits, Compulsory Specialization Requirements 52 credits, Elective Specialization Requirements 12 credits, Industrial Training 15 credits, and Graduation Projects 6 credits. The student advising software package consists of an interface as shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1. Interface of the SAS Package.

The package window displays three columns of text areas of course selection; ‘Student Courses’ included with Student Courses button for online course selection, ‘Suggested Courses’, and ‘Selected Courses’. A set of six buttons on the right of the display window; Courses (displays a list of all courses), Co. Chart (displays all courses in a graphical chart),

Co. Heir. (all course hierarchies of 3 or more course levels), Electives (list of electives with prerequisite courses), Bu. Inst. (instructions of course selection button with color coding, for example, buttons with red colored text are compulsory electives), and Co. Inst. (instruction for course selection based on forward hierarchical issues).

Figure 2. Online interactive course selection window.

The display has a status line showing the count of completed and currently taken college and department courses, selection between electrical and communications streams, credit points of the selected courses and total of credit hours before the start of the course selection procedure. There is another set of selection buttons at the window’s bottom section. These buttons select courses from ‘Suggested Courses’ menu and displays them in ‘Selected Courses’. This set also includes a delete button (deletes the last selected course), a clear all button (deletes all courses from the ‘Selected Courses’), a save to file button (saves the courses from the ‘Selected Courses’ to the file), and a help button (gives information of the six button on the right of display).

A. Course Selection Procedures

A student initiates the SAS package with a display window of Fig. 1. If the offline template is used for the passed courses input then the course list is automatically displayed in the first column of ‘Student Courses’. Alternately, the student inputs and displays the passed courses by selecting the online interactive course selection window as shown in Fig. 2.

The display in Fig. 2 is another graphical window with check boxes and select buttons. Check boxes select or deselect courses and display the selection in a text area, which is then saved to a file as well as in the ‘Student Courses’ by the File button. Student’s name, id, GPA, info is inputted thought the Student Information button. A Courses button displays a list of all courses as shown in Fig. 3.

A typical student with an id of 200711039 is chosen as an example. A list of students’ passed courses is displayed included with the status line information of 14 college courses, 7 department courses, and a total of 88 completed credit hours. The system automatically detects the next advising semester and displays a short, potential course list in the ‘Suggested Courses’. This list is chosen from all next semester offered courses depending on the taken prerequisites as shown in Fig. 1. This specific list allows students to choose courses only with the previously taken prerequisites.

Figure 3. List of all courses.

Student select courses by using course button icons shown in the lower portion of the window. The chosen courses are displayed under the column of ‘Selected Courses’ as shown in Fig. 4. A wrong selection can be deselected by the delete button included with also the credit points deleted from the semester credits display. A clear all button can reset the selection procedure and deletes all courses from ‘Selected Courses’ as well as from the credit points count to make it zero. The button ‘save to file’ stores chosen information to a course plan file named as student id for future modifications.

Figure 4. Example of chosen courses displayed in ‘Selected Courses’.

After save to file, the system automatically refresh to allow course choice for the next semester. The selections from the previous semester are now appended in the display of the first column as the passed courses and the middle column displays another short eligible courses list of the next semester. The outcome of the course selection is stored (semester-wise) in a file to show a complete typical plan as shown in Fig. 5.

System is also equipped with course selection depending on GPAs and academic warnings. Honor students with GPAs of 3.6 and above are allowed up to 21 credit hours whereas from 9 to 12 credits for students on academic probations.

B. Course Selection Priorities

The ‘Suggested Courses’ in Fig. 1 shows some courses appended with additional digits in brackets. These courses are prioritized to be taken earlier in their course plans. Fig. 6 shows an example college course hierarchy of MATH 1120 – ‘Calculus II for Engineers’. The course is shown with three appended digits of MATH 1120(4, 5, 18). The first digit indicates that the course has 4 forward hierarchal levels or semesters, second digit indicates that the course opens 5 courses in the next level or in other words the course is prerequisite to five courses in the next semester or level, and last digit indicated that overall 18 courses are dependent on the MATH course.

A second example in the Figure is of ELEC 360 – ‘Signal & Systems’ with four additional digits. This 4th additional digit is associated will all department compulsory courses and indicates that this course opens a department elective in the next semester. It is obvious that courses with no priorities can be timely delayed in selection whereas courses with high additional values shown in the brackets are prioritized to be taken earlier.

Figure 5. Typical course plan for remaining semesters.

Fig. 7 shows all such courses with three or more hierarchical levels. The longer the course chains the higher the chance for a student in graduation delays. This Figure is a part of help menus.

Work is in progress to extend the package to include the other four college departments. Future work would seek to integrate the SAS with the banner course registration system.

HSS 105ISLM 1103Free Elective 1Free Elective 2

ECOM 451ELEC 551

ELEC 315ELEC 320ECOM 360ELEC 431ELEC 433ELEC 451ELEC 461

ID #: 200711039NAME: Noura Ahmed Al HamdiMAJOR: Electrical EngineeringGPA: 3.09Date: 27-09-2011

Total of earned credit hours: 88---------------------------------------------------------Proposed Courses for Spring 2012ELEC 315ELEC 320ECOM 360ELEC 431ELEC 433ELEC 451ELEC 461

Semester Credit Hours: 17Total Credit Hours: 105

---------------------------------------------------------Proposed Courses for Fall 2012ELEC_370 ELEC_375ELEC_462ELEC_472ISLM_1103Free Elective 1

Semester Credit Hours: 16Total Credit Hours: 121

---------------------------------------------------------Proposed Courses for Spring 2013ELEC 495

Semester Credit Hours: 15Total Credit Hours: 136

---------------------------------------------------------Proposed Courses for Fall 2013ECOM_432ECOM_442SOCI_1153ELEC_585Elective 1Elective 2

Semester Credit Hours: 16Total Credit Hours: 152

---------------------------------------------------------Proposed Courses for Spring 2014ELEC_411ELEC_481ELEC_590Elective 3Elective 4Free Elective 2

Semester Credit Hours: 16Total Credit Hours: 168

ELEC 360

ECOM 360

ECOM 432

ECOM 442

MATH 1120

MATH 2210

ELEC 305

ELEC 310

ELEC 320

ELEC 315

ELEC 370

ELEC 375

ELEC 411

ELEC 481

ELEC 472

MATH 2220

ELEC 325

ELEC 431

ELEC 433

MATH 1120(4,5,18)

4 hierarchicallevels

opens 5 courses in the next level

opens 18 courses in all levels

ELEC 360(2,3,5,1)

opens 1 electivecourses in the

next level

Figure 6. Example course hierarchy and priorities.

ECOM 432ECOM 442

MATH 1110 – MATH 1120 – MATH 2210 – ELEC 360 – ECOM 360 –

ELEC 431ELEC 433MATH 1110 – MATH 1120 – MATH 2210 – ELEC 360 –

ELEC 305ELEC 310

ELEC 370ELEC 375

MATH 1110 – MATH 1120 – – ELEC 315 –

MATH 1110 – MATH 1120 – – ELEC 320 –ELEC 305ELEC 310

ELEC 411ELEC 481

ELEC 305ELEC 310

MATH 1110 – MATH 1120 – – ELEC 320 – ELEC 472

MATH 1110 – MATH 1120 – MATH 2220 – ELEC 431ELEC 433

PHYS 1110 – GENG 220 – ELEC 320 – ELEC 411ELEC 481

PHYS 1110 – GENG 220 – ELEC 320 – ELEC 472

MATH 1110 – MATH 1120 – ELEC 325

ELEC 335ELEC 345

– – ELEC 462 ELEC 451ELEC 461

Figure 7. All course hieraricy for three or more courses.

REFERENCES [1] H. Gunadhi, K. Lim, and W. Yeong, “PACE: A Planning Advisor on

Curriculum and Enrollment,” Proceedings of 28th Annual Hawaii Int. Conf. on System Sciences, Maui, Hawaii, 1995, pp. 23–31.

[2] M. Hagler, “A Stand-Alone PC-Based Advising Aid for Students,” Proceedings of the Frontiers In Education Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, Session 3A3, 1995, pp. 3A3.18–3A3.21.

[3] M. S. Laghari, Q. A. Memon, and Habib ur Rehman, “Advising for Course Registration: A UAE University Perspective,” Proceedings of Int. Conf. on Engineering Education (ICEE), Gliwice, Poland, 2005.

[4] O. Marques, X. Ding, and S. Hsu, “Design and Development of a Web-Based Academic Advising System,” Proceedings of 31st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Session S3C, Reno, Nevada, 2001, pp. S3C-6–S3C-10.

[5] P. Pumpuang, A. Srivihok, P. Praneetpolgrang, and S Numprasertchai, “Using Bayesian Network for Planning Course Registration Model for Undergraduate students,” Proceedings of 2nd IEEE Int. Conf. on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies (IEEE DEST 2008), Phitsanulok, Thailand, 2008, pp. 492–496.

[6] R. R. Hashemi and J. Blondin, “SASSY: A Petri Net based Student-Driven Advising Support System,” Proceedings of 7th Int. Conf. on Information Technology, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2010, pp.150–155.

[7] A. N. Nambiar and A. K. Dutta, “Expert System for Student Advising using JESS,” Proceedings of Int. Conf. on Educational and Information Technology, San Francisco, 2010, pp. V1-312–V1-315.

[8] V. Gonzalez and D. Esparza, “Work In Progress - Advising Tool to Improve the Time for Graduation and the Transfer of Students from a Community College to Engineering School,” Proceedings of 40th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Session T3H, 2010, Washington, DC, T3H-1–T3H-2.

[9] S. K. Shrivastava, G. N. Dixon, and G. D. Parrington, “An Overview of Arjuna: A Programming System for Reliable Distributed Computing,” in IEEE Software, vol. 8, 1991, pp. 63–73.

[10] S. K. Shrivastava and F. Panzieri, “Rajdoot: A Remote Procedure Call Mechanism Supporting Orphan Detection and Killing,” in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. SE-14, 1988.

[11] G. D. Parrington et al, “The Design and Implementation of Arjuna,” in USENIX Computing Systems Journal, vol. 8, 1995, pp. 253–306.

[12] S. Johnson, “Software Architecture Document for course registration system version 1.0,” A Technical Report published Wylie College IT, 1999.

[13] Vision Document of the C-Registration System, WyIT387, V1.0, Wylie College IT, 1998.

[14] Glossary for the C-Registration System, WyIT406, V2.0, Wylie College IT, 1999.

[15] Software Development Plan for the C-Registration System, WyIT418, V1.0, Wylie College IT, 1999.