A support system for student exchange - An exploration of course comparison, and the design of a system aiding student counselors working with exchange

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to propose a system for student counselors working with exchange students, and study its usefulness. The project aims to define the requirements for such a system, and to explore the possibility of automatically determining course similarity based on the metadata available.

To identify the requirements, a questionnaire was sent out to student counselors and interviews were conducted with potential users of the system. Based on findings from the data generation methods, a paper prototype of the proposed system was developed. The requirements of the system were derived from the results of testing the paper prototype. Based on these requirements, a prototype of the system was developed.

This prototype was tested on potential end users of the system, with interviews concluding the usability study. To evaluate the quality of the functionality for automatically determining course similarity, a set of courses already approved by student counselors were fed into the system, and the output was compared.

The results are promising, especially regarding the usefulness of the system.