A Rule‐Based Expert System Approach to Academic Advising

SUMMARY

For the Faculty of Aviation at San Jose State University, academic advising is a complex and extremely time‐consuming task; however, it is essential for aviation students to seek appropriate advice in order to achieve their individual academic goals in a timely manner. This paper describes and discusses the development of an expert system solution which has automated this activity and released faculty members for other important tasks. Within this project, an expert system shell (VP‐Expert) was used to develop the Academic Counselling Expert system. The project illustrates how powerful and extremely useful expert systems can be developed by non‐programmers in order to perform routine tasks. The computer‐based counselling system was accessed by sixty‐five aviation students during the Spring 1996 semester; the majority of them were able to seek appropriate advice, thereby saving the faculty advisor over thirty hours of consultation time.