Academic advising system using data mining method for decision making support

Abstract

With the high drop-out rates of college students across the Sultanate of Oman, the government urges HEIs to undertake ongoing analysis of its student population profile and evaluate the effectiveness of their academic advisory services. It is for this reason that this study intends to introduce an Online Student Academic Advising System for higher education, particularly to the Oman Tourism College (OTC). The developed system facilitates academic advising activities and keeps track of student's academic performance. By utilizing data mining method, the system is also capable of generating the required data set that can be used for data analysis and data modeling to discover useful knowledge regarding students' profile, students' registration, and students' module marks. The results of data mining in graphs and tables are very essential for OTC to make timely decisions and implement appropriate actions. The study was carried out using several stages of Developmental Research Method. By utilizing Quantitative Methodology from close-ended statements of the feedback survey, student participants were asked to evaluate the compliance of the developed system in accordance to the Industry Standard Organization 9126-1 (SQUARE ISO/IEC 9126-1:2001) software quality standards. The results showed that the system is a significant improvement for OTC and had a high level of compliance with the established software quality standards.