Abstract
There is a dearth of data visualization tools for displaying college degree-planning information, especially course prerequisite and complex academic requirement information. The existing methods for exploring degree plans involve a painstaking what-if analysis of static data presented in a convoluted format. In this paper, we present a data visualization tool, named as Dependency Evaluation and Visualization (DEV) chart, to visualize course prerequisite structure and a dynamic flowchart to guide students and advisors through all possible degree requirement completions. DEV chart uses an adjacency matrix of a directed acyclic graph to store a course structure for a degree into a database. Since DEV chart is created dynamically by updating data associated with each node of the directed graph, it provides a mechanism for adding an alert system when prerequisite conditions are not met, and hence the user can visualize the available courses at each step. Similarly, DEV chart can be used with project planning where nodes represent tasks and edges represent their dependencies.
Highlights
Many universities employ direct communications between academic advisors and students as the primary advising system [1]
The most common academic planning tool is the Academic Advising Report (AAR) or Degree Progress Report (DPR) that consists of a list of degree requirements, a list of courses credited towards satisfying each requirement, an indication of whether each requirement is satisfied, and the remaining number of courses/units needed to satisfy each requirement
We present a data visualization tool, which is named as Dependency Evaluation and Visualization (DEV) chart, to visualize course prerequisite structure
Summary
Many universities employ direct communications between academic advisors and students as the primary advising system [1]. Academic advisors are either faculty or professional advisors employed by an academic unit, and they typically help students make decisions about class schedules, select an academic major or minor, plan for graduation, and many other academic related activities [2] These important decisions are made based on information stored in academic planning tools and offered courses in the upcoming semester. There is a dearth of data visualization tools for displaying degree-planning information, especially course prerequisite information. The main objective of this paper is to introduce a novel data-visualization tool that is useful for academic advising as well as project planning where task dependencies play a major role. Prerequisite visualization is challenging as defining an appropriate data structure for representing complex degree requirements and course dependencies is the most difficult part. We restrict this research to develop a data visualization tool for academic advising, the data structure introduced in this paper is useful for creating degree audit systems and other advising tools
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