A Web-Based Knowledge Management Tool Utilizing Concept Maps for On-Line Student Advising

INTRODUCTION University students are being forced to work within an increasingly complex curriculum environment (Phillips, 2013). This situation has come about because of a number of factors which include the proliferation of programs within the university, the dynamic nature of course offerings and pre-requisite structures, and the prevalence of on-line and mixed-mode courses. One of the main outcomes of this situation is that students require more individual advising than in the past to avoid course selection errors (Bansal et al., 2003; McMahan, 2014). At the same time, the traditional advising model where a student meets one-on-one with an advisor is being replaced with an increasing reliance on Internet-based advising resources designed for "self-advising." (Harris & Harbsteit, 2003; Erickson et al., 2007; Hornak, 2010) Taken together, these two factors create a situation where students are highly dependent on Internet-based resources to navigate an increasingly complicated curriculum structure. In isolation, this would not be cause for concern; however, the reality that most university websites are not designed for this purpose creates the "perfect storm" that is addressed by this research (Kleemann, 2005). Namely, how can students in higher-education programs receive accurate advising in a dynamic curriculum environment using Internet websites that are not optimized to provide this content? Failure to deal with this situation causes problems for students and university administrators alike. From the students' perspective, course selection mistakes are expensive because they can delay graduation and postpone entry into the workforce (Phillips, 2013). In the meantime, student loans continue to accrue interest and earning prospects are put on hold. From the university administration standpoint, advising mistakes are bad because poorly advised students frequently require special consideration, policy deviations, and can expose the institution to potential legal liability (Swanson, 2006; Ford, 2010). These policy exceptions and related problems dilute the enforcement of the rules and potentially place the institution in jeopardy with accrediting agencies. Various solutions to this problem have been suggested by the literature. Some solutions involve the creation of standalone advising websites designed to provide only advising content (Marques, 2001). Other solutions suggested in the literature depend upon complex student information systems (SIS), some using exotic expert system technologies, to serve as proxies for human advising (Patankar, 1998; Grupe, 2002; Wittenstein & Sharma, 2002; Siegfreid et al., 2003; Hamdi, 2007; Yang et al., 2008; Ahmar, 2011). While these alternatives can be effective, all carry a significant cost. Specifically, independent advising websites often require duplicate content maintenance because they are normally built as a separate entity from the university website (so both need to be maintained). Even under ideal circumstances, some of the content of the advising website may be out of synchronization with the university site and thus provide inaccurate information (Teasley & Buchanan, 2013). Solutions utilizing SIS tools and expert systems have the dual problems of out-of-date content along with the technical considerations of gathering the advising information, converting it into a format usable by the system, and testing it to ensure that accurate advising is provided (Patankar, 1998; Ahmar, 2011). In short, the existing solutions do not adequately solve the problem. This justifies the need for the research presented in this paper. This paper describes an on-going research project intended to mitigate the student advising problem described above without incurring the complications inherent in the existing solution methods. This is accomplished by creating an intuitive interactive, knowledge management tool designed to access the Internet resources already on-line within the main university website. …