Computer-aided system for assessing and selecting effective masters' learning trajectory in variability of external factors considering the university industrial partners' opinion

The modern education system development is characterized by many uncertain, dynamically changing factors. The purpose and originality of the study presented in the article is to develop an automated system for building an effective educational trajectory in the conditions of external factors’ uncertainty. The developed system is a tool for assessment and dynamic adjustment of the educational process in accordance with the ongoing and possible future changes in external factors. The university industrial partners get a real opportunity to participate directly in the creation of a valuation criteria set and in the selection of educational trajectories. The developed automatized system integrates decision support methods, namely analytic hierarchy process, payoff matrix method, to consider the viewpoint of experts, and k-means clustering method for analyzing the students’ opinion. The experimental study of the system involved more than 100 master’s students: sixty 1 st year students and forty six 2 nd year students. The analysis showed that the application of the developed decision support system allowed to increase class attendance by 24 % and academic performance, while the proportion of students receiving excellent grades increased by 9 %. The system application enables the experts (Universities administration and teachers as well as industrial program partners) to modernize the educational trajectory promptly. Lecturers can prepare in advance for a potential reorganization of the educational process in the event of changes in external conditions. The novelty of the proposed approach is to integrate into a single learning management system a variety of modern and traditional methods: interviewing, clustering, decision support, forecasting changes in external factors, building an educational trajectory considering the opinions of all participants in the educational process.