Abstract
Nowadays, higher education worldwide is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected students’ attendance in the universities and causes universities to close down in more than 190 countries. On the other hand, novice engineers studied only a few lectures related to highway engineering. Their lectures have included very little knowledge about asphalt pavement construction as highway engineering consists of many areas that are not studied in detail during their studying years subject to their traditional education. Due to all mentioned, a new drive to promote online learning paves the way to evaluate our future approach to curriculum development and delivery of educational materials for engineering courses. However, experts can offer solutions to these problems using their past experience. Hence, a system that allows experts to share their experience with other engineers after completing a project is needed. Nevertheless, the web-based expert system for maintaining flexible pavement problems in tropical regions (ESTAMPSYS) designed in this study is a novel concept. Prior to developing this system, the need for such a system was determined through literature review and validated through a questionnaire survey. Experts were interviewed, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to construct the knowledge base of the system. Knowledge was presented as rules and coded in software through PHP programming. Web pages that support the user interface were designed using a framework that consists of CSS, HTML, and J-Query. Furthermore, the system was tested by an array of users engaged in highway engineering, namely, experts, teaching experts, novice engineers, and students. The mean values of the overall system evaluation performed by 20 users using a five-point Likert scale were 4, 4.5, 3.75, 4.25, 5, 4, and 3.5. Expert and user satisfaction prove the effectiveness of the proposed system.
Highlights
Nowadays, higher education worldwide is affected by the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic [1]. is pandemic has affected student attendance in universities worldwide and causes universities to close down in 191 countries as of 20 April 2020 [2]
The comparisons between ESTAMPSYS as an expert system for flexible pavements’ maintenance using treatment selection strategies and related expert systems whose functions and features are analogous to ESTAMPSYS are achieved
Comparisons between ESTAMPSYS and other expert systems are highlighted. ree types of expert systems were selected for comparison with ESTAMPSYS; these three are flexible pavement maintenance expert systems, treatment recommendation/selection expert systems, and pavement management expert systems
Summary
Higher education worldwide is affected by the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic [1]. is pandemic has affected student attendance in universities worldwide and causes universities to close down in 191 countries as of 20 April 2020 [2]. Expert systems in education (ESEd) attempt to create data and find data to solve problems In the process, this system will help the student based on expertise. Is study aims to build a web-based educational system for novice engineers and highway students to solve potential problems in maintaining pavements. E developed system renders expert knowledge about decision-making approaches for maintenance issues in restoring flexible pavements using an adaptable and straightforward interface to make the training process simpler for users. In this step of the methodology, a primary questionnaire survey was adopted to examine the need for a web-based expert system. Web-based knowledge Expert system for flexible Pavement maintenance in tropical region (ESTAMPSYS). Another part is the consultation environment utilized by nonexpert users to obtain information shown in Figure 2 which is the structure and relationship among the parts of the primary system
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