Petri nets based study plan construction supporting student's evolution monitoring

Abstract

In this work a model for an e-Iearning system is proposed for managing a dynamic educational system that, in addition to supervise the students' evolution throughout the course, allows the student to elaborate his/her study plan. The system has two distinct phases. The first phase where the student can visualize all the paths (sequences of modules) in which he/she can obtain his/her qualification, and select which one has the better fit with his/her requirements. The second phase allows the management of the student's evolution obtaining his/her qualification. For this purpose, models expressed in High-Level Petri nets are used, to model each module, as well the entire study plan interdependencies. This paper focuses mainly in the first phase, relying on the construction of the state space associated with the Petri net model of the study plan. The analysis of the generated state space is used to obtain all possible sequence of modules according with desired goals. Applying a set of queries to these results, students are able to obtain information on possible sequences of modules accomplishing his/her goals and requirements and select the best option.