Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell*

Kazimierz Kowalski, Mahabub Alam

Department of Computer Science, California State University
Dominguez Hills, 1000 Victoria St., Carson, CA 90747
({kkowalski,malam}@csudh.edu)
Jozef Goetz
Math/Physics/Computer Science Department
University of La Verne, La Verne, CA 9175, USA
jgoetz@ulv.edu

Abstract: On-line academic advising is an integral part of web-mediated teaching and learning that
has become popular among colleges and universities around the world. Such on-line academic
advising can also complement traditional teaching environment. WWW delivered advising system
has been described in this paper. It has been developed using Exsys CORVID™ professional expert
system shell for its capabilities related to system development and product deployment. Advising
website delivers decision making knowledge and customized recommendations to students through
an interactive interface. The system interacts with students by emulating conversation with human
advisor. Exsys CORVID’s user interface features are used to collect student’s data and to display the
result of the application of knowledge base to user input data.

Introduction

Academic advising is an enormously complex task that may sometimes require attention of faculty advisor
for several hours while interviewing a student. It is the educational planning task that guides the students through
the process of selecting classes, to be taken by the student in the incoming semester. During this process students are
involved in self-assessment, they explore academic and career alternatives, and they make decisions affecting their
future. Students need to take an informed decisions making the most of their education, and completing degree as
efficiently and quickly as possible. The process of selecting classes is so laborious due to the fact that several
constraints (coming from course prerequisites, actual class offerings, degree check requirements, student's
availability, etc.) should be satisfied concurrently. Some of the activities related to constrain satisfaction can be
automated, thus prompting the researchers to develop autonomous advising systems (Hsu, Marques, Ilyas & Ding,
2002). At several universities, like California State University Dominguez Hills, the need for an automated systems
is particularly important due to the fact that a lot of students are transfer students coming from nearby colleges and
they require much of the advisor's time with individual assistance during the registration process. The other reason
for an automated system is the large number of working (part-time and full-time) students whose availability is
limited, so their class schedule should be carefully designed to utilize the student's time optimally. In addition, the
facts that many faculty members are new and relatively unfamiliar with the curriculum, and that the number of
faculty members is also small, demand many departments to take special interest in automating students advising
process. To accomplish advising task effectively several approaches have been tried ranging from spreadsheet
software semi-automatic advising to applications of expert system shells (Kowalski, 1992).
There are also additional aspects of developing automatic advising system. Many universities provide on-line
education for remotely located students. Many offer international degree programs. In such cases it is impossible for
the student to see academic advisor face-to-face. The solution may be the creation of an advising system and making
it available on-line (Werner, Hunger, Schwartz & Buzuk, 2003). Additional argument for on-line advising is
continuous availability of the “intelligent advisor” as opposed to human advisor, particularly for students who take
night classes, tele-courses, online classes, or for various life circumstances they have difficulties getting to the
campus (Huntington, 2000). Beginning with 1998/1999 academic year Computer Science Department has begin to
experiment with creation of online advising system that combines web-mediated advising with expert system
technology (Kowalski, 2004).

*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
Expert Systems in Students Advising

Expert system is a type of computer application program that makes decisions or solves problems in particular
field, by using knowledge and analytical rules defined by expert in the field. The knowledge base provides facts and
rules about the subject and the inference engine provides the reasoning ability that enables the expert system to form
conclusions (Brosch, 2002). Several educational institutions have experimented with expert systems in students
advising.
Cutright, Williams & Debald (1991) describe a design of PC-based expert system for academic advising at
Industrial and System Engineering Department of Ohio University. They have written the system in their preferred
programming language eliminating in this manner the cost of licensing multiple copies of a commercial expert
system shell. Similar approach had been initially used at California State University Dominguez Hills where expert
system has been written in Lisp programming language (Kowalski & Ealy, 1991). At University of Wisconsin – La
Crosse (Wehrs, 1992) VP-Expert expert system shell has been used to design the system that supports academic
advising, and at the Computer Science Department of Calstate Dominguez Hills early version of Exsys expert
system shell has been used to design and implement advising system (Kowalski, 1992). All of the above are
automated systems where the advice is provided not by human but by a specialized computer program accessible
from dedicated workstations (Dick, Gyure, Patterson-Randless & Sernell, 2000).
With the introduction of the World Wide Web component of the Internet a range of on-line advising systems has
been introduced that assisted faculty with advising process in virtual environment (Virtual Counseling, 2003).
Combination of those two approaches, automated systems and on-line access, resulted in the development of
advising systems accessible via Internet browser (Hsu, at al., 2002). These systems are completely autonomous
intelligent systems that use knowledge bases to provide advice (Kim, 1992). Almost all of these systems use ruled-
based knowledge bases (Giarratano & Riley, 1998) and can be divided into four subcategories based on
implementation techniques: client-side scripting, server-side scripting, applets, and expert system shells.
Client-side scripting implementation technique uses JavaScript language to validate student’s input to advising
forms and to process encoded rules according to this input data (Kowalski, 2004).
Server-side scripting implementation technique uses Active Server Pages scripting to provide the engine for
student’s input data processing. An example of this system can be Web-based Interactive Student Advisement
described by Tang, Fluker & Zeng (1999).
Applet implementation technique uses Java programming language (Horstman, 2002) to encode knowledge base
and to process student’s input data. Web browser has to be Java-enabled, so users’ computers must have appropriate
plug-ins installed before applet could be use. At Michigan Technological University applet has recently been used to
provide advice to Chemical Engineering students (Morrison, 2003), and Duisburg University works on applets to
advise international students (Werner, at al., 2003). At University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill eAdvisor
implemented as signed applet is being in use (Stotts, 2003). At California State University Dominguez Hills an
applet is used to advise Communications Department students (CSUDH Communications, 2003).
Huntington (1997) describes the possibility and benefits of using expert system on the web including the use of
complex expert systems techniques, like sound, graphic, animation, etc, to deliver highly effective expert
knowledge.
Expert systems shells implementation technique, although used earlier as stand-alone student advising application
(Kowalski, 1992) has not been yet implemented on-line. Exsys_Corvid (Awad, 2002) expert system shell has the
features that allow distributing domain knowledge on-line and its application to on-line advising is the subject of this
paper.

Advising process

The academic advising is the process in which the advisor suggests to the students list of courses that are
appropriate to their aptitudes and interests and that will help them to achieve their academic goals in an optimal
timeframe. The advisory process must address two areas - degree check requirements and the student's special
interests. The advisor suggests consecutive courses to be taken by the student to personalize their course selection
and schedules to fit their needs, their objectives, their obligations to work, and to ensure progress towards
completing degree check requirements (Norton, 2002). In a relatively tightly structured degree programs, where

*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
sequential interrelations between most of the courses is observed the role of the advisor is to suggest courses
preserving prerequisite requirements and minimizing the time to get a degree. At the less rigid programs, or at the
general studies programs, student’s interest can and should be taken into consideration and courses from the set of
"electives" can be advised. Students’ withdrawals also play havoc with scheduling. Those who withdraw from the
courses rarely determine the consequences of their action on long-term graduation requirements. In this scenario,
student may wish to query an automated advising system to determine how this decision will influence their entire
curricular schedule and eventual graduation date (Billo & Bidanda, 1994).
Small number of faculty members at several departments prevents the department from offering all of its courses
every semester. Although such departments make every effort to offer the most needed courses, they have also to
offer, relatively frequently, other courses that are required for completing degree’s coursework. At such departments
freshmen should first take those courses that are prerequisites for the largest number of other courses. This ensures
the greatest chance for the students, to find among departmental offerings for next semester, the courses that the
student needs, or wishes to take. Taking the course which is a prerequisite for the largest number of other courses
guarantees the shortest study time, as the student does not need to sit idle one (or more) semester waiting for a
course which he has to take, but which is not actually offered or it is offered at an inconvenient time. Such situations
contribute to larger student attrition and have to be prevented by, among others, the advising process (Gordon &
Habley, editors, 2000).

Advising System

The goal of the project was to automate the students advising process in General Studies Program presently in
use at California State University Dominguez Hills. CSUDH’s general education program is the nucleus of the
undergraduate curriculum at the university, deliberately structured to provide the intellectual and effective
foundation required of a well-educated person (Blue, 2002). One major purpose of the program is to assure that
students who enter the university at the lower division level acquire appropriate knowledge, experiences and skills in
the liberal arts and sciences. The description of the program is relatively complicated and presents the challenge to
designers willing to code the knowledge into rules of expert system shell. We will show in this paper that with Exsys
Corvid expert system shell it is relatively easy to code these rules.

The General Studies Program is divided into three major components, and requires between 53 and 60 semester
units:
A. 15 to 18 units of Basic Skills divided further into 5 sections:
1. English Composition requiring the sequence of 2 courses,
2. Quantitative Reasoning, that requires one out of six courses (of student’s choice),
3. Logic/Critical Reasoning, that requires one out of two courses,
4. Oral Communication requiring one course,
5. Library Skills having one optional course,

B. 30 units of lower division General Education divided further into:

1. Natural Sciences that ask for 3 courses and laboratory, selecting one from 4 categories:
a. Nature & Methodology of the Natural Sciences having one course,
b. Important Results of Scientific Inquiry, that requires choosing one out of two courses,
c. Life Sciences, choice of one out of two courses,
d. Science laboratory, choice of one out of two labs
2. Humanities that ask for 3 courses with the following restrictions:
a. Introduction to Humanities as required course
b. Selection of 2 courses from 2 different categories and 2 different departments:
1. Cross Cultural Perspectives, choice of one out of five courses offered by 3 different
departments,
2. Aesthetic/Perceptual Thinking, choice of one out of four courses offered by 4
departments,
3. Critical Discipline, choice of one out of three courses offered by 3 departments,

*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
 4. Opportunities for Creativity, choice of one out of five courses offered by 3 different
department,
Please note that the same departments offer courses in several of the above categories
3. Social Sciences that ask for 3 courses from 3 different categories and 3 different departments:
a. Individual Perspectives, choice of one out of two courses offered by 2 different departments,
b. Groups and Societies, choice of one out of three courses offered by 2 departments,
c. Global Perspectives, choice of one out of two courses from 2 departments,
d. Historical Perspectives, choice of one out of three courses from 1 department,
Please note that the same departments offer courses in several categories.
4. The Whole Person, choice of one out of six courses

C. 9 units of upper division integrated studies with the following restrictions:

Select one course from each category. Courses are taken after both 60 units and all lower division General
Education (section B above) courses are complete.
1. Integrative Studies in Humanities, choice of one out of three courses,
2. Integrative Studies in the Natural Sciences, choice of one out of four courses,
3. Integrative Studies in Social Science, choice of one out of two courses (one of them can also satisfy
Cultural Pluralism requirement).
In addition students must take the course that emphasizes cultural pluralism (0-3 units), but which may also
satisfy one the General Studies (section C, category 3) requirements, and they have to take two Statutory
Requirements courses (History of the United States, and American Institutions).

From the description of the general education program we can conclude that advising system has to keep track of
the number of units taken from each section and category, and keep track of the names of departments involved in
selected courses within sections. It has to satisfy the number of units required for sections and categories, it has to
satisfy constraints related to the number of departments involved, and it has to take into consideration student’s
interest while choosing one course over another one within categories. It should also take into consideration
student’s availability.

Designing the System with Exsys CORVID™

Exsys Corvid delivers new approach to developing expert system advice for the Web. It allows conversion of
decision-making process into a form that can be delivered within the web page (Exsys Inc., 2003). A large portion of
building expert system is presenting this decision-making process in the form acceptable by computer. As with
every algorithm designed for computers this decision-making process has to be presented in the form of a series of
individual decision steps. In case of expert system shells there is a special program called “Inference Engine” that is
used to analyze and combine individual rules to solve larger problems. It is the “Inference Engine’s” job to
determine what possible answers there are to the problem, what rules can be used to get these answers, what input
data are needed to apply the rules, and to decide which answer is most likely, based on these rules.
In case of advising system described in previous section it is easy to identify possible answers as a set of courses
that student has to take to satisfy graduation requirements. Expert system will identify most likely courses that will
suit a student. Those actual courses are advised based on the list of restrictions that in our case are quite extensive.
These restrictions have to be presented in the form of rules that expert system will apply.
Students use advising process at different stages of their study. As the student cannot take all required courses in
one semester, he has to select the list of courses to be taken next semester, after completing current semester’s
courses. In such case when the expert system decides what courses to advise for the next semester it has to know if
the student has not taken such courses already. From this it is easy to conclude that the rule deciding if a particular
course XYZ could be advised has to know whether student has taken or not this particular course already. So the
rule should have the qualifier: “if you (student) have NOT completed (yet) course_XYZ”. Inference Engine has to
know what is the status of that course in terms of its completion by the student. The straightforward solution to this
is asking student the question: “have you completed course_XYZ already?”

An example rule that shows this type of data gathering by inference engine is presented below.
*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
RULE NUMBER 123:
IF:
Which of the following SOCIAL SCIENCE courses have you completed so far? POL 100 General Studies Political
Science: World Perspectives
THEN:
[SS] IS GIVEN THE VALUE [SS]+3
and [FLAG6] IS GIVEN THE VALUE 1

Inference Engine has to know if the student has completed the course not only for the reason not to advice THIS
particular course, but also to know how to advice courses from various categories to which THIS course belongs to.
If the course, for example, belongs to the category from which only 3 courses (lets say “out of seven possible”) can
be taken by student, the engine should keep track of “how many courses (units) from that category have been taken
by the student so far, AND how many courses from that category the inference engine has already selected to the list
of advisable courses. Exsys CORVID offers the possibility of using several types of variables that can be
incorporated into decision-making process. In case of students advising systems the best are numeric variables that
keep track of the number of courses (taken or advised) in every category (as described in previous section of this
paper). In case of rule 123 (presented above) variable [SS] is used to keep the number of units taken in the category
SOCIAL SCIENCES (category B.3), and [FLAG6] keeps the number of courses taken from Global Perspectives
category B.3.c.

Figure 1 shows an example screen where Inference Engine asks this kind of questions (aggregating them into
group for efficiency).

*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
 While variables like [SS] or [FLAG6] keep track for their assigned categories they are also used in decision-
making process by being incorporated in the qualifiers of the form: “if Number_Of_Courses_In_Category_ABC is
smaller than Maximum_Allowed” (then a course that we are about to advice and that belongs to this category CAN
be advised).
An example rule that shows the usage of the previous variables is presented below:
RULE NUMBER 124:
IF
[SS]<9
and [FLAG6]<>1
and Which of the following SOCIAL SCIENCE courses have you completed so far? NOT GEO 100 Earth, the
Human Home
and Which of the following SOCIAL SCIENCE courses have you completed so far? NOT POL 100 General
Studies Political Science: World Perspectives
and (TTh) Which of the following times are you available? TTh at 10:00AM
and Which of the following subjects are you interested in? Political Science

THEN:
POL 100 General Studies Political Science: World Perspectives (3 Units) – Confidence=1
And [SS] IS GIVEN THE VALUE [SS]+3
And [FLAG6] IS GIVEN THE VALUE 1

In addition to the use of variables that keep track of units and courses in specific category and subcategory of
courses rule 124 employs two qualifiers that ask if any of the two courses POL_100, and GEO_100 (that constitute
subcategory B.3.c) has been taken by student, and two other qualifiers: one that ask for student’s availability during
the time when course POL_100 is offered, and the other that ask if the student is interested in Political Science. If all
conditions are true then the system advises course POL_100 with the confidence level=1.
Similarly to previously described qualifiers inference engine has to ask the student about his/her availability, and
also about student’s interests. Fig. 2 presents the case of the latter question.

*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
 There are several additional rules similar to rule 124. If the second section of the course POL_100 is offered
at some other time there should be the rule that looks like rule 124 with the only qualifier different, and that is the
one asking for student’s availability at that other time. If the student’s interest is not in Political Science there are
other rules (similar to rule 124) that deal with the course GEO_100, as an alternate course to POL_100 in
subcategory B.3.c.
When the Inference Engine gathers all necessary data from the student, it displays the list of choices (courses) that
could be taken by the student in the incoming semester. The list consists of only those courses for which confidence
level has exceeded threshold value set by knowledge base designer. Exsys CORVID allows using different forms of
confidentiality, and in case of this system we use simple true/false translated into levels 1 and –1.
Fig. 3 shows the list of courses that expert system advises to take, based on student’s answers to qualifier
questions.

*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
 Exsys CORVID offers unique (to expert system shells) way to deploy interactive expert system on the Internet.
When the system is completed it can be delivered to users via Java applet. All that is required to incorporate expert
system to a Web site is adding a few lines to the html page, and putting the runtime applet and knowledge base files
on a server. Actual working system, described in this paper, implemented and presented as an applet is available at:
http://mieszko.csudh.edu/corvid/gsadvisor.html.

Conclusions

The goal of advising project was to automate the students advising process presently in use at California
State University Dominguez Hills. The system advises undergraduate students with regard to General Study’s area
of the curriculum. The system has been designed to test its usefulness to the students and to gain experience with
regard to user interfaces. The system has been tested for one semester due to the way of coding class schedule. The
fully coded system uses 18 qualifiers, 64 choices (courses), 16 numeric variables, and 243 rules. Students “play”
with the system by simulating their future semesters and learning what classes the system would advise them to take.
There are, however, few technical problems associated with deployment of advising applets on the Internet. One
of them is lack of support for Java swing packages in the most popular web browser, which is Microsoft Internet
Explorer. Consequently users need to download and install appropriate extensions for this browser on their
computers. However, not all students are able or willing to do this job. The solution is to recommend access to an
applet from university workstations located in labs, libraries, and students’ Internet cafes, where system
administrators in charge have already installed and configured the software.

*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.
 There are plenty of possibilities to expand the system in the future by associating it with the university-wide data
base that maintains the information about current status of the student in terms of classes that he/she has already
completed, as well as data base consisting of the information about the date and time of classes’ offerings, so the
system can match them with student’s availability. We plan to continue the system expansion and its application
various school’s units.

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*Kowalski K., Alam M., Goetz J., Intelligent On-line Advising with Expert System Shell, in Reeves,T.,
Yamashita, S.,(Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education, AACE , October 13-17, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp 687-694.