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Online Course Registration and Advisory Systems Based on Students’ Personal

and Social Constraints

Article in Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research · December 2021

DOI: 10.24017/science.2021.2.8

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 Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research (KJAR)
Print-ISSN: 2411-7684 | Electronic-ISSN: 2411-7706

Website: Kjar.spu.edu.iq | Email: [email protected]

Online Course Registration and

Advisory Systems Based on
Students’ Personal and Social
Constraints
Bamo Nadir Faraj Aree Ali Muhammed
Computer Engineering Department Computer Engineering Department
Engineering College Engineering College
Komar University of Science and Technology Komar University of Science and Technology
Sulaimani, Iraq Sulaimani, Iraq
[email protected] [email protected]

Article Info ABSTRACT

Course registration is a challenging task that students face
Volume 6 – Issue 2- during the registration process sometimes resulting in enrolling
December 2021 on wrong courses, if proper guidance is not provided.
This paper presents a web-based registration and advisory
DOI:
system which has been developed and implemented by Komar
10.24017/science.2021.2.8 University of Science and Technology (KUST) which facilitates
Article history: course registration for both students and administrative staff
and which ensures that the best possible schedule and
Received 30/4/2021 course/section combination is available to students based on
Accepted 24/10/2021 their personal needs and the requirements of the course.
The system assists students in making appropriate decisions by
Keywords: providing them with collated and analyzed data about each
Online Course Registration available course including pass rates, average grades, the
System, Academic Advisory, number of students’ friends who have registered for the course
Individualized or reviewed the course favorably and the number of subsequent
recommendation. courses for which the selected course is a prerequisite. The
system can also help to reduce the workload placed on academic
advisors, assisting them in this time demanding task. The data
implemented in the system is taken from an existing database
which collates course registration data from spring 2016
onwards and which will ensure the delivery of accurate results.
Copyright © 2021 Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research.
All rights reserved.

1. INTRODUCTION
Many students suffer the consequences of inappropriate choices in course selection made
during the registration process; if they are not guided carefully in this regard, it may cause
them to miss their optimal study path or even to prolong the time taken to complete their study
program unnecessarily [1].
In this paper, we present a registration system which we have designed and implemented
which implements an academic advisory feature system to help students select the most
suitable courses during registration. Course registration is a routine process that is conducted
at the start of each semester but it can be stressful, time consuming, tedious and confusing for
students if they are not supported with appropriate guidance and advice. In some cases, the

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 83

registration process may result in students choosing unsuitable combinations of courses, a
decision which could potentially lead to the student failing the entire semester.
Prior to the opening of the registration period, university administrative staff use a scheduling
system to prepare a schedule for the offered courses which ensures that no time overlaps occur
between courses for which a student is eligible. This system allows students to arrange their
preferred schedule without the need to be worried about any scheduling clashes and ensures
that they can obtain the maximum number of credit hours within the given semester. The
maximum allowed credit hours range from 15 to 20 depending on the department in which the
student is enrolled.
The scheduling feature is part of a larger system that has been in place at KUST since 2016.
The data from previous years was also imported from the old system, and this allows the
scheduling processes to be broken down into steps. Before the registration window opens,
students can log into the system and either send or accept friendship requests to and from other
students in the same college or department. For example, all of the students at the College of
Engineering, which consists of the Departments of Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering,
Petroleum Engineering, and Environmental Engineering can apply to become friends since
they share mutual courses throughout their academic career. The system then displays the
schedules of selected friends to the student so that he or she can apply for the same schedule
during the registration period. This socially aware element of the course recommendation
feature is one of the crucial components of the system, as more than quarter of the students at
KUST have stated that the ability to study the same courses as their friends is the most
influential factor in choosing which courses/sections to register for. Many studies have shown
the significant role which the ability of students to study with their friends plays in their
performance and their subsequent academic success [2]. Psychological studies have also
revealed that students are better off and enjoy improved results when they study together in the
same classes as their peers [3] [4].
The geographical region in which KUST is located lacks a comprehensive public
transportation network, and therefore students are forced to commute to the university using
shared taxis with their friends. Based on our observations and the results of a questionary
conducted among students of KUST, many cases were identified in which students did not
accept offers to study course(s) for which they are eligible due to the fact that they could not
afford to travel to the university alone. The questionnaire (See Figure 1) also asked students to
state their most important criteria when selecting a schedule, with 155 (25.7%) of the 604
respondents responding that the ability to study with friends was the most significant criteria.
36.1% of participants preferred schedules which allowed them to spend the minimum time
possible at the university, while the remaining respondents stated a preference for schedules
which offered the maximum number of permitted credit hours. The system implemented at
KUST provides a sufficient level of flexibility to satisfy the needs of all of the students from
the above-mentioned groups.

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 84

 Figure 1: Student Questionnaire

In contrast to traditional course registration systems that offer courses on a “first-come first-
served” basis, the proposed system allows students to register for their desired courses/sections
without any availability constraints being applied; the courses will be divided automatically
into a number of sections at a later date to allow all students who are friends to be registered
for the same section. One drawback of the “first-come first-served” approach lies in the fact
that courses are offered with a limited number of available places, an issue which is a source
of considerable stress for students during registration, but which also places substantial request
loads on the server and poor system performance. By removing the availability constraint the
system can offer students a stress-free course registration process.
KUST currently offers three categories of courses: university, college and departmental
courses. The university courses are those shared amongst the departments and thus large
numbers of students are eligible to apply to these courses each semester. At the end of the
registration period the system automatically divides the courses with a high number of
applicants into multiple sections which are taught on the same day and at the same time while
still ensuring that friends are allocated to the same sections. College and departmental courses
are shared among students who are studying at the same college and departments, respectively.
The teaching plan is a crucial element of student life at university, and any failure to take it
seriously will reflect poorly on students' academic performance and may force them to repeat
study years. Under the previous arrangement, faculty members were responsible for giving
advice to students during registration. This face-to-face advisory service often required the
undivided attention of both students and the adviser, an obligation which faculty members
often struggled to fulfil given their other professional responsibilities. In order to help students
and ease the burden of faculty members, our system automizes each individual process
ensuring that the involvement of the adviser is not required.
The curriculum of the prerequisite systems is structured in such a way that a single course or a
combination of courses can be marked as the prerequisite for another course. In such a system
students can register for a course only once they have completed its prerequisites or earned a
sufficient number of credit hours required by the course. This provides each student with the

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 85

option to plan his or her own unique study plan throughout the program. Some universities
have also developed interactive study plan flowcharts (See Figure 2: Study Plan of Computer
Engineering Dept.) allowing students to see the specific number of courses available to them
in the following academic year by hovering over the individual prerequisite course [5].

Figure 2: Study Plan of Computer Engineering

The collaborative filtering algorithm/approach [6] is used to recommend which course is more
likely the student will pass among his/her eligible courses. For each and every course the
student is eligible for also the system recursively queries the database to find students who
have completed the course and their grade is less or equal to the student’s grade in the course
prerequisite. The system then suggests the course to be taken by the student if the passing rate
in the course amongst the found students is higher than 60%. For example, let us assume that a
student has taken Calculus I and Calculus II and has passed them successfully. One of the
courses for which Calculus II (See Figure 3: Prerequisite Graph of Computer Engineering
Department) is prerequisite for is Advanced Calculus. The system suggests taking Advance
Calculus or not based on the query result. By following the system recommendations, students
can reduce the chance of failing courses as a result of a lack of information about the nature of
the course for which they are about to register.

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 86

In order to determine the relativity of the courses in the program more precisely, the required
information is stored in the database relating to the category to which this course belongs. The
categories for the computer engineering department include those related to math, physics,
programming or hardware, but the categories will change for other departments. While the
main purpose of this paper is to present the design and implementation of a registration and
advisory system, some preliminary preparations are also required in order to integrate the
system within the requirements of scheduling and other preparations from academic and

Figure 3: Prerequisite Graph of Computer Engineering Department

administrative staffs. However, the system also has additional range of functionalities
including those of grade reporting, transcript and diploma requests, financial related
functionalities, student admission, attendance and many more. These features lie beyond the
scope of the present paper and will be explored in other future research publications.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
While previous studies have divided the student advisory process from the function of course
registration, our system merges both of these processes into a single solution which provides
advisors with a considerable amount of information about students’ academic histories and the
courses which are available to them.
2.1 Advisory Systems
Traditional methods of advising students are often demanding and require considerable
amounts of onerous effort due to the ongoing changes in prerequisite courses and students’
desires for unique study paths. Previous research in this field has demonstrated that academic
advising is a crucial process, but studies have also revealed that the task is not only restricted
to offering advice on courses; it also includes other responsibilities such as ensuring students
complete their study programs in time, exploring the options for postgraduate studies and also
providing career advice [7].
Many researchers have focused on addressing these issues by designing web-based
applications that can facilitate the task of academic advisors and help students to make

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 87

appropriate decisions on course selection during the registration period [8][9][10]. Other
researchers have used fuzzy logic in their efforts to develop advisory systems [11].
2.2 Course Registration
Technology has aided and simplified the process of course registration in a number of
different ways. One system has been proposed based on collaborative filtering where courses
are suggested based on student performance in previous semesters. This is accomplished by
taking the grades of passed courses and the average grades when a course is taken multiple
times or when it is passed in the first place in order to gain new experience or to enhance the
GPA [12][13][14][15].
Some systems are also integrated with students’ social media accounts in order to allow
students to see how many of their friends on those social networks are taking a course in
which he or she is interested [16]. Course sequence recommendations, which consider the
specific course constraints, have also been the focus of research [17]. Another way to tackle
the issues of course registration is by utilizing deep learning [18]. According to previous
studies these systems are classified into basic computerized systems, single-intelligent systems
and multi-intelligent systems as illustrated in Table 1.

System Drawbacks Strength Ref.

Category
Basic Systems of this type are not Uses a single interface to eliminate [23]
Computerized integrated with any databases and duplication in the advisory process. [24]
are therefore difficult to modify in
real-time.

Data entered by students may be

inaccurate and hence inaccurate
decisions can be made. [9]
Single- Neither decisions nor Eliminates a considerable amount [22]
Intelligent recommendations are automated. of paperwork and simplifies the
process by computerizing and
Neither the student nor the adviser digitalizing the procedures.
is provided with report
documentation.

Multi- User interfaces are not suitable and The systems are more suitable for [25]
intelligent it takes much longer to perform students and can support strategic
complex operations. decisions.
Table 1: Registration Systems Comparison

In addition to eliminating the drawbacks of the previous systems, our system saves
time and offers real-time feedback features for both advisors and students without the
need for data entry and the potential of human error. Similarly, the system has the
huge advantage of integrating the two systems of course advice and course
registration.
3. PROPOSED SYSTEM
An overview of our proposed system is shown in Figure 4. The system allows students to view
a filterable list of scheduled courses and sections for which they are eligible in the coming
semester. Students can select their desired courses/sections from the presented list and apply
personal conditions, such as their preferred days, times or their friends’ selected
courses/sections, in order to filter the list. Each course included in the list is accompanied by
important information such as the pass rate of the course in previous semesters, the number of
credit hours available and the type of the course to provide students with an overview of the
course.

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 88

Once the courses have been selected, the system proposes a number of possible schedules
sorted according to the number of the student’s friends sharing the same schedule and the
filtering criteria that the student applied to the list of the selected courses. The student then has
the option to register for a particular schedule or to mark it as a favorite. They also have the
ability to modify their schedule during the registration process in order to revise their
decisions.

Figure 4: System Overview

The system also implements several roles such as those of students, OSAR (Office of Student
Affairs and Registrations, administrative staff, accounting office, directory of examinations,
and departmental chairpersons, with the two main roles illustrated in the use case diagram
below (Figure 5). Students have the ability to modify their scheduling completely during the
registration process. OSAR has ultimate authority over the system and there are many more
features available to them which are not illustrated in the use case diagram.

Figure 5: Use Case Study

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 89

 4. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
The system consists of two components. A backend web server was developed using Spring
Framework [19] and backed by a MySQL 5.7.8 [20] database, while the frontend client was
developed using the VueJS JavaScript framework [21] and Bootstrap 4 for CSS styling. The
web server is a RESTful API which consumes and provides data in JSON format. It also uses
JSON Web Token (JWT) for authentication purposes. The backend is separated from the
frontend so that it can be accessed by both mobile and desktop applicants should this
capability be added in the future. The system is hosted on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
(Amazon EC2) to ensure scalability and load balancer integration when required.
Once the student has logged into the system and clicked on the registration button, he or she is
presented with a list of all of the courses/sections for which they are eligible. Each course
contains information such as the pass rate of the course, the number of the user’s friends who
have selected the course as their favorite or registered for the course and the weighting of the
course.
Pass rate and course weight are the two most important pieces of information. The pass rate
shows the percentage of students who passed the course on the first attempt while the course
weight indicates the number of courses for which this course is prerequisite. This type of
information is crucial during the course registration process as it allows students to make
informed decisions when selecting the most appropriate combination of courses. Figure 6
shows a screenshot of the main dashboard of the system from the students’ perspective.

Figure 6: System Screenshot of Student

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 90

Students also can view their friends’ schedule by clicking on the combo box to choose a friend
from the list. As was mentioned above, students from the same college can send friendship
requests to an unlimited number of students but in order to complete the process, the request
needs to be approved by the other students. Once students have accepted the friend request,
this item of information will become visible on the course panel to inform students of how
many students among his/her friends have taken the course along with the ability to view their
schedule (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Friend's Schedule Screenshot

In order to make the system more student friendly, students who are friends in the system can
also send course suggestions to each other. This allows many groups of students to ensure that
they stay together and speeds up the process of planning during registration; in theory, a single
student can plan a course combination which can then be followed by the others, reducing the
need of every student to explore every single case scenario when it comes to course selection.
As was mentioned above, students will be provided with useful information such as the
number of courses for which a particular course is a prerequisite; in order to see the course
titles, they will only need to click on the specific number that represents the total number of
courses that will be offered to them once they have successfully passed the current course.
The system also provides concise information about all of the courses eligible during
registration; by clicking on the course names, students will be redirected to a page where they
can view course descriptions, instructor names, locations and the number of their friends who
have taken the course previously (if any).

5. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have presented a course recommender and academic advising system that
can be used by tertiary education institutions during the course registration process. The
processes of scheduling, registration, and academic advising are among most important of the
routine tasks of higher education institutions, but these tasks are becoming increasingly
challenging due to the increase in the number of students and the need to manage curricula in
which individual students can select unique study paths. Our research focuses on a system of
registration and automated academic advising that can facilitate this process for students and
faculty members, and also greatly aid university administrative staff. Students can be relieved
of stress during the registration process as place numbers in courses are no longer a source of
concern, with students able to register for any course at any time during the process. In
addition, students can ensure that they can attend classes with their friends who are following
the same academic path and who have a similar eligibility for the offered courses.
We would like to stress here that we do not consider this system as a full replacement for the
role of traditional academic advisors. In fact, neither this system nor any other advancement in
technology has ability to make decisions which are unfailingly accurate, because in many
cases human beings will always have a greater understanding of the wider context of the
decision-making process. Nonetheless, our system can serve as a valuable assistant in the

Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research | Volume 6 – Issue 2 – December 2021 | 91

advisory process, facilitating the role of advisors and permitting them to make better decisions
in a more efficient and time-effective manner. Our system aims to ensure that by reducing
their workload academic advisors’ involvement will remain as crucial as ever.
The distinct advantage of the system is that combines the advisory and course registration
systems, leveraging and analyzing the historical data to present the students with sufficient
information to make a proper decision on what courses they should register for without the
need of academic advisors.

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