Student Advisement System

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Student Advisement System

• Welcome and thank you for coming we hope we can
  entertain you well with our Student Advisement
  System, Version 0.00 The Team - Chris Utz -
  Georgi Kichukov - Parag Jain - Vencislav
  Stanev - Prof. Herbert J. Bernstein

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Student Advisement System

• What is SAS?
• Short for Student Advisement SystemWeb-based
  software solution for degree audit and student
  advisement Why version 0.00 because it is yet
  to overcome intensive testing and improvements
  What do advisors do when a students walks
  in? 1) Look at their transcript (already in the
  computer) 2) Look at the Printed Catalog 3)
  Match 4) Fill out student worksheet
• What does the program do? Well, the same thing!

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Student Advisement System

• What is SAS?
• Pull the transcripts from Banner and process them
  in the form of courses and credits taken. (Chris
  will enlighten you on that shortly)
• It is a difficult task to represent degree
  requirements such as college-wide, core, major,
  minor etc. as they appear in the catalog in a
  database

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Student Advisement System

• What is SAS?
• Once we have our data requirements
  transcripts
• We wrote a program to automatically match keeping
  in mind major, minor, core, college-wide and even
  liberal arts requirements.Based on the output
  of the program we present the list of classes yet
  to be taken in a form similar to the student
  worksheet.

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Student Advisement System

• What is Administration Module ?
• But that is not all you get one extra benefit
• The administration module is a database
  management tool simplified to perform only the
  specific tasks that might be needed for the
  Student Advisement System. We wrote a program
  that will make changes to our database using a
  web based GUI interface, so that once a
  requirement changes or a new major comes in, one
  can easily go ahead and update the data.
• You will hear more about that shortly!

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Student Advisement System

• At that point you are probably thinking stop
  talking and show us something but dont worry it
  is coming!
• Or you might be asking yourselves
• Does it replace the current advisement process?
• What will it do for the college?
• How will it help students and faculty?
• I will let Parag take the word here and answer
  these for you.

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Student Advisement System

• Does it replace the current advisement process?
• NO!
• But helps and simplifies it a great deal!
• This program is only a facilitation of the
  process and students by no means should rely on
  the program only!
• Reference to the printed catalog and actual
  meeting with a live advisor should be performed
  in addition.
• This program is geared to be used by the
  students.
• If advisors choose to use it they should
  double-check the programs output with the
  printed catalog and the actual transcripts in the
  system.

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Student Advisement System
What will it do for the college? How will it
help students and faculty? Advisement process
will get easier Students can check what classes
they still need to take 24 hours a day from
anywhere Some problems and errors in the catalog
and college rules that might have been made will
be easier to find and fix Provides a wonderful
opportunity for Computer Science students to work
on a real world project.
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Student Advisement System

Technology http//arcib.dowling.edu/UtzC/present
/linux.html
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Student Advisement System
Advisement System Demo Test Cases 1) Major
Computer Science (Clean case) Minor
Finance 2) Major Mathematics (Transfer
Physics Math) Minor Physics 3) Major
Computer Science (P proficiency exam, CIS
001) Major Mathematics Minor
Business 4) Major Accounting (W withdraw, not
retaken MTH 104) Major Finance Minor
Mathematics
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Student Advisement System
Language Specifications for Representing Degree
Requirements http//arcib.dowling.edu/CSC175
F02/systemdocs/language.htm
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Student Advisement System

• Database Description
• Since now you have some idea of how we represent
  the requirements I will go ahead and briefly show
  you the details of data that we store in our
  database.
• Schools, Divisions, Departments
• Degrees, Disciplines, Majors, Minors, Doubleflags
• Courses, Levels
• Core, College-wide, Major, Minor requirements
• Transfer, General
• Usershttp//arcib.dowling.edu/CSC175F02/data/in
  dex.html

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Student Advisement System

• Administration Module
• The administration module is a database
  management tool simplified to perform only the
  specific tasks that might be needed for the
  Student Advisement System. We wrote a program
  that will make changes to our database using a
  web based GUI interface, so that once a
  requirement changes or a new major comes in, one
  can easily go ahead and update the data.
• In the future most of that data will be
  administered and entered in Banner only but for
  now we had to make our own version.Will be
  replaced by tighter integration with banner
• The requirements section is the most important
  part of the administration module.
• Lets go step by step into several test cases to
  get an idea.

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Student Advisement System
Administration Module Demo
Login Add CSC 175 Software Engineering to College
Wide Requirement Delete it after that Modify One
of Computer Science Requirement Add CSC182 to
list of CSC electives Delete it after that
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Documentation

• We have tried to document all major aspects of
  the advisement module.
• All the information about the advisement module
  has been put up on the web. http//arcib.dowling.e
  du/CSC175F02/
• User manual has been created.
• http//arcib.dowling.edu/CSC175F02/user_doc.html
  
• System manual has been created.
• http//arcib.dowling.edu/CSC175F02/sys_doc.html
• All the code has been documented
• Documentation is by no means complete more
  documentation is always a good idea

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Student Advisement System

• In the works / Next Step
• Do a lot more testing
• Extend the system to work with all majors and
  minors
• Extend the system to graduate students
• Integrate the system with Banner

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Student Advisement System

• Possible extensions
• Suggest a possible schedule for next semester
• Add more intelligent decision making based on
• time preferences
• location preferences
• course load preferences
• professor choice
• keep information for the students and make the
  system learn from previous experience

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Student Advisement System

• Maintenance
• This effort is hopefully going to be continued
  and the program maintained by the Computer
  Science Students under the supervision of Dowling
  Computer Science Department and Dowling IT
  Department