Development of multi-agent based decision support student-lecturer appointment tool

• Main Author: Maureen, Gbefa Peremoboere
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Q Science (General); QA76 Computer software
• Online Access: http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/20737/; https://plh.utem.edu.my/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=106011

University research and educational process has been positively influenced by the World Wide Web which has tremendously facilitates learning and teaching, this same internet can also facilitate student lecturer appointments, but currently students and lecturers are faced with issues such as finding free time-slot, difficulty of students to meet supervisor and difficult to manage appointment records. Therefore this thesis proposed a model and software agent based tool to support the decision making of students and lectures in managing appointment scheduling in universities there by address the aforementioned shortcomings. The model proposed in this thesis comprises of the variables that influence appoint scheduling and process to be implemented in making appointment scheduling by students alongside their lecturers. The tool was developed using PHP MYSQL integrated by multi-software agents that supports the decision making of students in finding free time-slot, resolving difficulty of students to meet supervisor and also addressing difficult of managing scheduled appointment records. The proposed model was evaluated (verified) from online survey data collected from randomly selected 102 respondents and the developed tool was also evaluated using different data collected from paper based questionnaire from another 102 respondents. SPSS software was used to analyse both the online survey data and paper based questionnaire data using statistical analysis such as test of normality, reliability test, validity test, descriptive statistical study and lastly correlation analysis. Findings from this study show that the proposed model variables and process are important and should be considered in appointment scheduling in university domain. Furthermore findings also outlines that the developed software agent based tool is applicable in supporting student lecturer appointment scheduling in universities.