Automated Generation of Course Improvement Plans Using Expert System

Abstract

To satisfy ABET's continuous improvement criterion, an instructor, teaching a course suggests, at the end of the course, an improvement plan to be implemented when the same course is taught next time. Preparation of such a course improvement plan may be mandatory if a pre-specified target level of students' learning is not attained. Since, manual preparation of a course improvement plan is difficult, an idea of generating it using an expert system is presented. The objective is to make the task of improvement plan preparation easier and enjoyable. The proposed expert system has a set of remedies and a set of rules in a data base. A web-based interface queries the instructor about teaching and assessment tools used in the course. The inference engine selects the most appropriate remedy based on instructor's preferences. A cloud implementation of the expert system has been used to test it for a course.