Academic Orientation Supported by Hybrid Intelligent Decision Support System - Efficient Decision Support Systems: Practice and Challenges from Current to Future - page 249

orientation consists of supporting students in such decisions helping them by means of
advices and additional information to facilitate their decisions, such that, students will be
successful in their academic choice.
In order to make clear the concept of academic orientation we have studied different
educational systems to extract common features in order to show the generality of our
proposal. We have observed two common features: Evaluation and Specialization.

3.1.1 Evaluation
The main point that all academic institutions and educational systems have in common, is
that they evaluate their students by means of different evaluation tools (tests, essays, tasks,
exercises, etc.). The final result of this process is a mark that reflects not only the students'
knowledge but also their skills, preferences, tastes about the subject, etc.
The starting point for our proposal is composed by three information items: students,
subjects and marks (see Table 3).

Mathematics Literature Biology Economy

John 9 6 4 8

Miranda 5 9 Not available 6

Claire 4 3 7 Not available

William 7 2 Not available 6

Table 3. A fragment of a rating/mark matrix for students and subjects
The main point that all academic institutions and educational systems have in common, is
that they evaluate their students by means of different evaluation tools (tests, essays, tasks,
exercises, etc.). The final result of this process is a mark that reflects not only the students'
knowledge but also their skills, preferences, tastes about the subject, etc.
The starting point for our proposal is composed by three information items: students,
subjects and marks (see Table 3).

3.1.2 Specialization
Most educational systems all over the world from early educational stages to University
degrees allow students to choose among different specialization branches according to their
skills, preferences, attitudes and marks, building a personalized so-called Academic Profile.
These specialization academic branches are based on certain patterns. Each branch consists
of a set of subjects: several ones are compulsory, so-called core subjects, and others, the
elective subjects, are optional.
On the other hand, an academic branch can group subjects in different modules which try to
specialize students in a topic or area. These modules are called profiles or modalities and
may be different depending on each country and sometimes on the institution. The
modalities consist of modality and elective subjects. The former are specific of the modality
although can be shared by several modalities. The latter can be selected independently of
the modality.
Most of academic institutions (Secondary school, High school, Universities) follow this
scheme by offering at least core and elective subjects, adding others the possibility of
choosing modalities and their modality subjects, in order to build an Academic Profile. For
example, in a Computer Engineering degree the student can specialize in software, and