Online Advising Assistant
Kamal S. Ali[1]
Abstract
Today, advisement is an essential component of the higher education process. It is also an item that is closely scrutinized by accrediting agencies. Effective advisement requires the advisor to juggle three sets of information before coming up with a schedule for the advisee. These are the set of courses needed for graduation, the set that has been (or is being) completed by the student, and finally which courses of the ones not completed are offered next semester. Using cyberspace, all the information above can be placed on a single screen making advisement simpler.
This paper outlines an advisement system that automatically compiles and displays advisement information, as well as manages advisement scheduling. Some of the system’s features, such as security, restrictions on student/faculty access, etc. are described in this paper. This is followed by a discussion of some of the problematic areas in advising such as elective selection, changing graduation catalog etc. The paper continues on to suggest ways to improve the systems capabilities.
Introduction
At the University of Southern Mississippi, School of Engineering Technology(USM-SET) advisement is a three phase process. I. Advisement Appointment Scheduling, II. The Advisement, III. Advisor’s Activity Report Generation. The first phase is initiated by passing a five-day grid of 15 minute slots to the faculty (Advisors). The advisors are to block out the times they are not available for advisement and make the resulting grid available to students. The students select a slot by signing on the grid. Administrative staffs make student files available for advisors based on the signed grid. After the advisor and student meet, the advisor returns the student’s file with a copy of the selected schedule back to the administrative staff. The advisement record is then logged and student folder is returned to storage.
This paper describes an online system developed to streamline the advisement process, based on the USM SET advisement model. The system places all advisement activities online, while protecting the privacy of students. The system begins by handling the advisement scheduling process. Then, during the advisement process, the system generates a graphical display detailing the students’ progress. The advisor uses this display to make a selection of courses for the student. Finally, the system tracks and records all advisement activities placing all this data in searchable format.
The system described in this paper, although based on the USM-SET advisement system, was developed for the College of Information Technology (CIT) of the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). This system can immediately be transferred to any US institution, since the educational system in UAEU is modeled after the US semester/credit hour system. The paper will start by examining the advisement part of the system, and then continue to discuss the scheduling and recording systems.
The Advisement
To effectively advise a student, the advisor needs to know three items. These are:
- The set of courses the student needs to complete his/her degree (Catalog).
- The courses the student has completed successfully (Transcript).
- The set of courses that has not been taken yet by the student and are being offered (Schedule).
The set of courses needed for graduation, or the catalog selected by the student for graduation is not necessarily a single set of courses. In most universities a student is allowed to graduate using the catalog of the year he/she joined the institution or any later catalog. The advisor should therefore be aware of all the what-if scenarios presented by all possible catalogs, to be able to select the one that best suites that particular student’s needs. This presents the advisor with a set of documents (as many as the number of catalogs the student can use for his/her graduation) to examine while advising the student. The second document the advisor should examine is the student’s record (Transcript) to find out what courses have been completed (or are being completed) and hence what courses are to be taken. Many universities have combined these two documents presenting the advisor with a single document that combines the courses taken and the ones left to be taken for a particular catalog year. This information is then coupled with the third document which is the schedule of courses offered the next semester. All this information is needed to make the selection of what courses the student should take.
The advisement system outlined in this paper presents all the information above on a single screen (Figure 1). The system presents courses from the selected catalog in a semester-by-semester format listing the ideal set of courses the student should take each semester in a separate column. A four year program will hence be presented in eight columns, the right-most column being that of the first semester. Course sequences that are pre-requisites are linked by single-head arrows whereas co-requisite courses are linked by double-headed arrows. On the same web page, the student record is overlaid. A course that has already been completed by the student is listed in a different color while showing the student’s grade. Another color is used to indicate courses that the student is currently taking. Here, the word current replaces the student’s grade. Courses that have not been taken by the student and are offered appear with a pull down menu. The menu shows the sections and times that course is offered. Finally, courses that have not been taken and are not offered appear with a black box with the words “Not Offered.” By looking at this single sheet (web page) the advisor can immediately see how the student is progressing and can easily determine the set of courses the student needs to take.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 1, shows a 5-semester section of the advisement screen. A close-up is shown in Figure 2. As the figures show, a student can take courses from different columns (semesters) as long as pre-requisites are satisfied. It isclear that by simply glancing at this page, an advisor is provided with all the information needed at once. A selection of courses can therefore be made much quicker and with greater accuracy. The system is further programmed to notify the advisor if the course sections selected have a timing conflict.
Once a set of courses is selected and comments are entered, the advisor clicks the “REGISTER” button. This process emails a copy of the selected course list to the student, and updates the advisor’s records(Figure 7).The advisor isexpected to print a copy (Figure 3) for paper files. Please note that this is an advisement system and not a registration one. The “REGISTER” button does not register the student for the courses selected, but rather, it only generates a schedule the student can use to register.
The process of selecting a schedule can further be streamlined by allowing the computer to optimize section selection. There are a number of software packages that perform such a task based on student constraints. Here, the student passes the course numbers and time he/she prefers to attend class to the software package. The software calculates the best schedule or set of schedules based on the student’s constraints.
This advisement system gets its information from the University Records directly. The Catalog information and course offerings are generally public information and in most cases easily accessible. Students’ records, on the other hand, are not so easily obtained, and should be protected, as they include personal information on the student. The advisement system should therefore not allow for indiscriminate access to this information. The system discussed here, has been designed to allow the advisor access only to records of the students he/she should advise. The student using this system are further restricted to accessing only their personal records. Using password protection, the system is designed to ensure that students’ records are only accessed by those permitted to see them.
Figure 3
The Advisement Appointment System
Students are required to sign up for an advisement appointment with an advisor well in advance. To facilitate this process, the system allows the advisor to generate a schedule sheet showing times they are available for advisement (Light Blue)(Figure 4). This schedule is then made available to students by the advisor. The advisor can change the times he/she are available. The advisor, however, is not given permission to modify or move an advisement slot selected by a student. Only a student can change the time and day of an advisement slot he/she has selected, and then, only if the change is done more than a day in advance. This allows the administrative staff time to organize advisement material prior to advisement. Figure 4 and 5 show the advisor and student advisement scheduling views.
Before a student selects an advisement slot, he/she chooses an advisor. The system shows the student all the available advisors (Figure 8). Once an advisor is selected, the system does not allow the student to change to another advisor. Restrictions on advisor selection can easily be modified to suite the particular institution policies. That is, a student can be restricted to a certain advisor or set of advisors, or he/she can be allowed to change advisors etc. In the system described here, if a student attempts to schedule an appointment with another advisor, the system will prevent the student form doing so, and issue an alert stating the fact that the student has an appointment with the other advisor. The system was designed in accordance with the UAEU advisement policies and can be modified to suite any other policy requirements.
Figure 4
The students’ view of the appointment system allows the student to see the slot he/she has selected, slots taken by other students and the available slots. The system does not display the identity of other advisees on the students’ view.Slots appear as either Open (Light blue), Not-available (Dark blue), Taken-by-another-student (Yellow), or My-Slot (Orange) indicating slot selected by this advisee(Figure 5).
The advisors’ view, however, shows taken slots by displaying the student’s ID on them. The student’s ID in the advisement slot is hyper-linked to his/her advisement sheet. An advisor can therefore click on the student’s ID to see the advisement sheet for that student(Figure 1).
The appointment system shows a five day schedule. The administrator can open or block days for students and advisors. When a day is blocked, no modification to any item on that day can be made. This allows the administration time to arrange student files etc. Blocking a day also initiates a set of emails. These are reminders to students and a listing of which advisor is advising which student on the blocked day. USM policy would block an advisement day at 4pm the day before.
Figure 5
The Advisement Record System
Each time a student is advised using this system, the advisor is asked to record that advisement. Recording the advisement generates a table showing the names, numbers, dates etc of all students advised by that advisor(Figure 6). This is an important part of this system since advisement is an activity that is tracked by most schools to be used for evaluation.
The system also set up to flagstudents that register,yet not show up for advisement. Such students are flagged with a “No Show” red label. The advisement records of all advisors can be made available to administration in any format.
Figure 6
System’s Security
The system is password protected(Figure 7).Users are prompted to change their passwords on first logon. The security system implemented in this prototype however, uses clear text to save passwords, clearly a security risk. Improving security for this system should be rather straight forward. There are many scripts available on the internet that can improve on the security of this package [3]. Depending on the need of users, the appropriate security system can be used.
The system is organized to allow a student to see only his/her records. The system also allows the students to see their records on different what-if scenarios. These are based on different catalogs or different majors. A student logging on to the system is not allowed to see the records of another student (Figure 8). A student is allowed to see the timetables of all advisors. This remains the case until he/she selects an advisor. Once an advisor is selected, however, the students may only see the time schedule of that advisor. This restriction is based on school policy. The system can easily be modified to suite any other policy. For example, students can be assigned advisors beforehand, etc.
An advisor, on the other hand, may see the records of all students he/she may advise. All an advisor needs to do is to enter the student’s ID number to access that student’s information (Figure 9).The advisor may also modify his/her time schedule. Again, an advisor can modify the times he/she is available for advisement as long as the day is not blocked by the administrator.
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Development Tools
The systems was developed using PHP and Mysql [1][2]. Both of which are public domain software packages. There are very many scripts for all sorts of functionalities available on the Internet. This allows for fast and easy system development. However, many institutions do shy away from using such scripts for fear of security breaches. PHP and Mysql are used heavily in the College of Information Technology of the United Arab EmiratesUniversity, since its establishment in 2000. To date, no evidence of lax security could be detected.
Other Considerations
The system, as it stands, displays each course as a box in the main advisement screen. To select a course, a pull down menu is used to display the sections offered for that course. In the case of electives, however, the box would need to represent a set of courses. This will necessitate an extra level of menus. Here the user would click the pull down menu to see the set of courses, and then select a course to see the possible sections for that particular course. This process is not programmed in the system shown here. However, such a feature should be included for this package to be usable.
Another feature to be considered is that if a schedule optimization engine is to be added to this package, there will be no need to list the sections of a course. The user will only select the courses allowing the software to do the section selection. Therefore the main display will show the courses with a check box for the ones offered. For electives, there will have to be a pull down menu showing the set of courses available.
One last feature that can enhance the effectiveness of this package is access to previous advisement records online. Currently, this is done by accessing the student’s paper file. Having this information online would surely enhance the advisement process.
All the figures used in this paper are screen shots of real advisement of UAEU CIT students. To protect the privacy of these students, all names and ID numbers have been blocked out.
Conclusion
The system described in this publication allows for the display of all necessary advisement information on a single screen. That coupled with the use of colors and other graphical capabilities of the computer screen can enhance the speed and accuracy of the advisement process. The system can also streamline the advisement scheduling process as well as keep track of all advisement activities.
References
Acknowledgement
The author wished to thank the United Arab EmiratesUniversity for allowing the use of its facilities in developing this package. Special thanks go to Dr. Harmain, Dr. Radaideh and Mr. Talal for their valuable input in the development of this package.
Author Information
Dr. Kamal S. Ali is a Professor and Coordinator of the Computer Engineering Technology Program at the University of Southern Mississippi. During the period June, 1998 and July, 2003 Dr. Ali served as a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the United Arab Emirates University and as Director of the Computer systems Engineering Program of the College of Information Technology at UAEU.
[1] Computer Engineering Technology, School of Engineering Technology, University of Southern Mississippi, Box 5137, Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5137