2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Effective advising ensures students take the proper classes to stay on track for their graduation. For example, in an engineering curriculum, it is crucial that students maintain the proper sequence of courses that results in the culmination of the program's required capstone design course(s). Any human error during the advising process can risk the disruption of the smooth progression through the program for a student. Thus, a computerized web-based advising tool can be highly useful to eliminate such human errors in identifying the most needed courses during an advising session. Currently, many advising tools are available through commercial businesses or developed by those working in the field of education. In the current work, the development and use of a web-based advising tool have been highlighted. The tool is customized to align with the curriculum of the engineering program at Southern Arkansas University. It takes the completed and currently taken courses as inputs and makes a prediction of courses arranged semester-wise until the student graduates. The user has numerous options while using this app, such as selecting a minor, excluding a course from the advising semester, selecting an option for what semester a particular course will be taken, selecting summer courses, selecting an average number of hours per semester, etc. The advising tool has been used to advise engineering students since it was developed. To investigate the effectiveness of the tool, a set of survey questions were given to those students whose schedules have been made using the advising tool. The collected survey data has been analyzed statistically to determine the tool's efficacy from students’ perspectives. The analyzed data indicate that the students were overall satisfied and had positive attitudes towards different aspects of the tool.