I am after a comprehensive listing of PhD. or Masters level theses and
conference papers detailing the application of Case-Based Reasoning or
CBR technique (a variance of Expert Systems) in the area of academic
advising, academic advisement or academic advisory systems.

I've already known of the following system.
"AAA: Another Academic Advisor using Case-Based Reasoning"
(http://132.235.28.162/bnguyen/papers/aaa.pdf)

I also know of a few academic advisement systems which use other
techniques in expert systems.  The theses and conference papers should
be related to the feasibility studies, designs & plans, system life
cycles & phases, applications, implementation, testing and maintenance
of only CBR technique, in the area of academic advising or academic
advisement only.

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Clarification of Question by tanat-ga on 15 Apr 2003 18:45 PDT

I also have access to all conference proceedings of ICCBR and ECCBR
(was EWCBR), so don't worry about them.

In addition, the following books did not have reference to CBR in
academic advisement either.

- "Case-Based Reasoning" by Janet Kolodner
- "Applying Case-Based Reasoning: Techniques for Enterprise Systems"
by Ian Watson
- "Academic Advising: a Comprehensive Handbook" by Gordon et al.
(NACADA)
- "Applying Knowledge Management: Techniques for Building Corporate
Memories" by Ian Watson

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Clarification of Question by tanat-ga on 01 May 2003 01:44 PDT

Hi, mathtalk-ga,

Thank you for taking interest in my question.

I now realize that the term academic advising or academic advisement
may be a little bit vague.

The system that I am after should be able to give more detailed
academic advices to students, rather than just merely deciding on
majors of study.

In particular, given at least student's ranked preference in fields of
study and their previous academic performance, as well as the field of
study in which each subject's curriculum teaches and each subject's
difficulty, the academic advice given should produce a list of
recommended subjects, sorted in certain ranking orders, and
general/simple qualitative description why one subject ranks higher
than another on that list.

I have come across a few systems with at least the above mentioned
features, implemented in Rule-based Reasoning (RBR), and thus are very
limited in adaptability and migration into new academic environment or
academic program structure.

In any cases, I'm looking forward to your fruitful response and your
findings.

Kind Regards,
tanat-ga

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Clarification of Question by tanat-ga on 01 May 2003 17:55 PDT

Hello, mathtalk-ga,

I've just read another paper whose content is similar to the one
you've read as well.

An Internet-based expert system for selecting an academic major:, 
The Internet and Higher Education, Volume 5, Issue 4, 2002, Pages
333-344
Fritz H. Grupe

Professor Grupe mentioned that the early prototype of MyMajors.com
used an expert system tool, and was reprogramed and enhanced with
Visual Basic.  The current version is essentially Java-based.  As for
specific AI techniques, it wasn't clear whether CBR was used.  It
seems that rather complex, cascaded RBR was used instead though.

Warm Regards,
tanat-ga

Hi, tanat-ga:

I'm working on your very interesting question, but it will take
considerable time at the library and not just on the Web.

This looks kind of interesting:

[Fritz H. Grupe]
http://www.coba.unr.edu/acc-cis/grupe.asp

Besides a couple of papers in preparation, he has set up this site:

http://www.mymajors.com/

It's not clear to me if case-based reasoning is used in this
application, but that is a topic that Dr. Grupe has written about in
another paper.

regards, mathtalk-ga

Hi, tanat-ga:

I spent some time in a real library today, using the specialized
databases there to search for materials relevant to your question.

My focus today was on the dissertations and educational/advisement
side of things.  While I did not find any exact matches, it was a
challenge to my synonym thinking, and I did get a look at one of the
papers noted above:

Fritz H. Grupe, Ed.D.
Student Advisement: Applying a Web-Based Expert System to the
Selection of an Academic Major
College Student Journal v.36 no.4 (Dec. 2002) p. 573-81

The paper doesn't mention "case-based reasoning," a phrase Dr. Grupe
is obviously familiar with from another paper (on audit proposal
development), so it seems likely that this is not used in his
"MyMajors" Web site.

Tomorrow I will drill down from the computer science/expert systems
side, and we can see where we are.

regards, mathtalk-ga