An Automatic Recommendation System for Student Class Study and Major/Career Planning(1/3)

A major choice in high school or undergraduate stage is an important decision in the person life. The main issue of difficulty making the decisions of major choices for the students is a lack of knowledge and information about majors and its mapping to careers. There are still no adequate professional counselors for the major choices of students, especially in high schools of Mongolia. Mismatch of the major choice and lack of processing information through the professional study is one of the reasons to switch the major. Such changes are wasteful in time and resources, and also it is the cause of emotional and economical stresses of students. Moreover, it might be an inception of being unemployment. To overcome the main issue, a Major Recommendation System (MRS) is proposed in this 3-year joint project. In the first year, this project will develop a novel algorithm of the recommendation on interests and competencies of students and will construct the college major dataset in Taiwan and Mongolia and its mapping into careers. In the second year, in order to know more about desired occupations of students and to reduce knowledge gaps between students of urban and rural areas, we will conduct the experimental courses using Open edX, which is open source - course management system to host MOOCs. Before to do this, we shall prepare the platform and contents. The Taiwanese team will be responsible for Open edX, especially; its conversion (exchange) of contents (learning materials) from a MOOC platform while the Mongolian team will deploy it and will translate the platform into Mongolian. If a development of modules related a course activity is needed in Open edX, both team will work together and will implement it. We are going to carry out the experiment. In the third year, we will analyze and evaluate student’s achievements, will identify the abilities and skills of the students from the behaviors tracked in Open edX and will recommend suitable majors and its corresponding careers (jobs) to students. The proposed system aims to provide the orientation and thecounsel to students in selecting the major that fits with their interests and skills and recommending its corresponding careers. In conclusion, the collaboration with this joint project between Taiwan and Mongolia is expected to bring more close relationships and exchanges of technology, education, and culture.