Open Access

ARTICLE

Ontology-Based System for Educational Program Counseling

Mamoona Majid¹, Muhammad Faisal Hayat², Farrukh Zeeshan Khan³, Muneer Ahmad^4,*, NZ Jhanjhi⁵, Mohammad Arif Sobhan Bhuiyan⁶, Mehedi Masud⁷, Mohammed A. AlZain⁸
1 University of Management and Technology, Faculty of Informatics and Technology (IT), Lahore, Pakistan
2 University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Faculty of Computer Engineering Department, Lahore, Pakistan
3 University of Engineering and Technology Taxila, Faculty of Computer Science Department, Taxila, Pakistan
4 Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
5 School of Computer Science and Engineering, SCE, Taylor's University, Malaysia
6 Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Xiamen University Malaysia, Bandar Sunsuria, 43900 Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia, 21944, Saudi Arabia
7 Department of Computer Science, College of Computers and Information Technology, Taif University, P. O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia
8 Department of Information Technology, College of Computers and Information Technology, Taif University, P. O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia
* Corresponding Author: Muneer Ahmad. Email:

Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing 2021, 30(1), 373-386. https://doi.org/10.32604/iasc.2021.017840

Received 14 February 2021; Accepted 02 May 2021; Issue published 26 July 2021

Abstract

Choosing the right university program can be very challenging for students. This is especially the case in developing countries such as India and Pakistan, where university admission depends on not only the program of interest but also other factors such as the candidate’s financial standing. Since information on the Internet can be highly scattered, university candidates often need counseling from qualified people to decide their educational programs. Traditional database systems cannot effectively organize the large unstructured data related to university programs. It is challenging, then, for prospective students to acquire the information needed to make good decisions to consider factors such as personal preferences, available options, and the job market. This study proposes an integrated framework that takes advantage of the latest ontology-based semantic technologies. The proposed system can efficiently extract user-specific constraints in unambiguous queries and then retrieve more precise information. The system uses Web sources to ingest the right information and then extract explicit and implicit knowledge about educational domains and related university offerings. We believe the proposed system can effectively and efficiently choose an educational program by incorporating user constraints.

---

Keywords

semantics; ontology; knowledge-based system; educational counseling

---