An Interactive Decision Support System for College Degree Planning

Many students in the Unites States enter college without having decided on a focus for their studies, and thus are faced with choosing from a large number of potential majors and associated very complex sets of degree requirements which can include many courses in other areas of study. Academic advisors use academic planning tools to help students make decisions about class schedules, selecting an academic major or minor, planning for graduation, and many other academic related activities. There is a dearth of decision support systems for degree planning, mainly due to the complexity of degree requirements, and thus many existing academic planning tools utilize static documents or PDF files for displaying information pertaining to degree requirements and course prerequisites. This work considers the complexity of degree requirements and presents the design and implementation of an efficient interactive decision support system that helps students explore degree completion paths. Keywords: degree planning, academic advising, academic decision making, decision support system, college degree planning