SASSY: A Petri Net Based Student-Driven Advising Support System

This paper introduces the Course-Petri net, a specialization of Petri net which is used as the foundation for development of an advising system, SASSY. The system suggests courses for an advisee based on (i) Frequency of the course offering (ii) Balancing the course load, (iii) Shortening the path length to graduation, (iv) Preference of advisee, and (v) Entertaining different scenarios of course loads for the entire duration of the advisee´s university life. A prototype of SASSY was informally evaluated by ten advisees. The preliminary findings revealed that SASSY received approval of all advisees and it has a high potential for use in a student-centered learning environment.