Design and Development of Intelligence Based Decision Support Systems for Post Graduate Examination Processes

Abstract

Post graduate courses in India admit students mainly based on entrance examinations. newlineEntrance examinations have varied formats, from descriptive type of questions to Multiple newlineChoice Questions (MCQs). The admission procedure is mainly dependent on the performance newlineof the students in the entrance examinations. In Karnataka, entrance examinations are held for newlinethe admission of the students into many post graduate courses, including MCA. The purpose newlineof this work is to test whether the question paper for this entrance examination is testing the newlineaptitude of the students correctly or not, if so to what extent? newlineThe research work employs several methodologies to answer this research question, most of newlinethem being data mining techniques. The analysis part is twofold one is to analyze the newlinehistorical performance data of the students, and the second is to analyze the question paper of newlinethe entrance examination itself qualitatively. The main data mining techniques that have been newlineemployed are probabilistic methods, regression analysis, predictive modelling, genetic newlinealgorithms, artificial neural networks. The work also tries to go into the causal factors of newlinestudents aptitude and investigates the why of the students level of aptitude. To study the newlinequestions in the question paper qualitatively, the work employs Bloom s taxonomy and other newlinestandards evolved by the researcher as benchmarks. Finally, an algorithm is developed to newlineevolve a balanced question paper based on the students aptitude. Towards this end, a Decision newlineSupport System is evolved, which does not eliminate the need for manual intervention, but is newlinea support system for the existing system. The work has got the merit that it can be used to newlinecreate general blue prints for question paper generation for a number of entrance examinations newlineand is not limited to the study of one single examination. newline