DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT ACADEMIC

SUPPORTING TOOL

Liew Hui Chang

Bachelor of Engineering with Honors

(Electronic & Telecommunication Engineering)

2009

UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK

R13a

BORANG PENGESAHAN STATUS TESIS Judul: DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT ACADEMIC SUPPORTING TOOL

SESI PENGAJIAN: 2008/2009 Saya LIEW HUI CHANG

(HURUF BESAR)

mengaku membenarkan tesis * ini disimpan di Pusat Khidmat Maklumat Akademik, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak dengan syarat-syarat kegunaan seperti berikut:

1. Tesis adalah hakmilik Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. 2. Pusat Khidmat Maklumat Akademik, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak dibenarkan membuat salinan untuk

tujuan pengajian sahaja. 3. Membuat pendigitan untuk membangunkan Pangkalan Data Kandungan Tempatan. 4. Pusat Khidmat Maklumat Akademik, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak dibenarkan membuat salinan tesis ini

sebagai bahan pertukaran antara institusi pengajian tinggi. 5. ** Sila tandakan ( a ) di kotak yang berkenaan

SULIT (Mengandungi maklumat yang berdarjah keselamatan atau kepentingan Malaysia seperti yang termaktub di dalam AKTA RAHSIA RASMI 1972). TERHAD (Mengandungi maklumat TERHAD yang telah ditentukan oleh organisasi/ badan di mana penyelidikan dijalankan). a TIDAK TERHAD Disahkan oleh (TANDATANGAN PENULIS) (TANDATANGAN PENYELIA)

Alamat tetap: P.O.BOX 116 94000 BAU, SARAWAK MR. TAY KAI MENG Nama Penyelia

Tarikh: 8 April 2009 Tarikh: 8 April 2009

CATATAN * Tesis dimaksudkan sebagai tesis bagi Ijazah Doktor Falsafah, Sarjana dan Sarjana Muda. ** Jika tesis ini SULIT atau TERHAD, sila lampirkan surat daripada pihak berkuasa/organisasi

berkenaan dengan menyatakan sekali sebab dan tempoh tesis ini perlu dikelaskan sebagai SULIT dan TERHAD.

This Final Year Project attached here:

Title : Development of an Intelligent Academic Supporting Tool

Student Name : Liew Hui Chang

Matric No : 14356

has been read and approved by:

__________________ _________________

Mr. Tay Kai Meng Date

(Supervisor)

DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT ACADEMIC SUPPORTING TOOL

LIEW HUI CHANG

Thesis is submitted to

Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Bachelor of Engineering

with Honours (Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering) 2009

Dedicated to my beloved family and friends

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Mr Tay Kai Meng for

his insightful guidance and encouragement throughout this work. Without his advice,

I would not have been able to proceed and bring the project to a satisfactory

completion. My appreciation also goes to my mentor, Ms Shafrida Sahrani for her

constant motivation and support.

I would like to express my gratitude to my parents and siblings for their

continuous support and encouragement in my study over the years. Besides, I would

like to thank all my friends especially Salex, Mee Lee, Tze Ling, Kok Cheow, Yee

Chiang, Kim Khoon and Kian Tat for their supports and companion during four

years study in UNIMAS. My special thanks go to Ming Shinn, for his care and

continuous moral support.

Last but not least, I wish to thank Dr Darrien Mah and all the staff of Faculty of

Engineering and also those who directly or indirectly help in this project success.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT ii

ABSTRAK iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

LIST OF TABLES x

LIST OF FIGURES xii

ABBREVIATION xv

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Overview 1

1.2 Problem Statements 2

1.3 Objectives 3

1.4 Project Overview 4

1.4.1 Electronic Notification System 4

1.4.2 ETree based Automated Document

Cluster System

5

1.5 Thesis Outline 6

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction 8

vii

2.2 Electronic Notification (E-notice) System 9

2.3 Short Message Service (SMS) messaging 11

2.4 Send SMS messages from a computer 14

2.5 Software Development Kit 15

2.6 Data Clustering and Visualization Techniques 15

2.6.1 Self-Organizing Maps 17

2.6.2 Self-Organizing Algorithm 19

2.6.2.1 Initializing the Weights 19

2.6.2.2 Get Best Matching Unit

(BMU)

19

2.6.2.3 SOM Training 20

2.6.3 SOM Visualization 21

2.6.4 Growing Self-Organizing Maps

(GSOM)

21

2.6.5 Evolving Tree as a type of Growing

Self-Organizing Maps

22

2.6.5.1 Operation of Evolving Tree

(ETree)

23

2.7 Documents Classification, Visualization and

Organization

25

2.7.1 The Self-Organizing Map Approach 26

2.7.2 The Growing Hierarchical Self-

Organizing Map Approach

29

2.8 Summary 31

viii

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction 33

3.2 System Development Procedures 33

3.3 Motivation of Invention for Electronic

Notification System

35

3.3.1 Overall Operation 37

3.3.2 Terminal Program 39

3.4 Motivation of Invention for ETree based

Automated Document Clustering System

40

3.4.1 The Proposed ETree based Automated

Document Clustering System

41

3.4.2 Abstract Content Similarities

Matching

43

3.4.3 Construction Procedure of the Proposed System

46

3.4.3.1 Construction of Document

Matrix

47

3.4.3.2 Construction of ETree 51

3.4.4 Development of Graphical User

interface and Visualization

57

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Introduction 59

4.2 The Electronic Notification System 59

ix

4.2.1 The Designed Graphical User

Interface

59

4.2.2 Evaluation of the System 67

4.3 The ETree Automated Document Clustering

System

68

4.3.1 The Designed Graphical User

Interface

68

4.3.2 Evaluation of the System 70

4.3.2.1 50% of Similarity Threshold 72

4.3.2.2 40% of Similarity Threshold 79

4.3.2.3 30% of Similarity Threshold 82

4.3.2.4 20% of Similarity Threshold 87

4.3.3 Further Evaluation 90

4.3.4 Further System Accuracy Evaluation 95

4.4 Summary 109

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Conclusions 110

5.2 Project Limitations 111

5.3 Future Works 112

REFERENCE 113

APPENDIX A 119

xv

ABBREVIATION

2-D Two-Dimensional

BMU Best Matching Unit

BSS Base Station System

CDMA Code Division Multiple Access

ENCON Engineering Conference

ESOM Evolving Self-Organizing Map

ETREE Evolving Tree

GHSOM Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Map

GMSC Gateway Mobile Switching Center

GSM Global System for Mobile Communications

GSOM Growing Self-Organizing Map

GUI Graphical User Interface

HLR Home Location Register

HTML HyperText Markup Language

IDE Integrated Development Environment

PBS Personal Bibliographic Software

SDK Software Development Kit

SIM Subscriber Identity Module

SMC Short Message Center

SME Short Message Entity

SMS Short Message Service

xvi

SOM Self-Organizing Map

TDMA Time Division Multiple Access

UNIMAS University Malaysia Sarawak

VLR Visitor Location Register

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

2.1 Typical organization of network elements in a GSM

network supporting SMS [Adapted from [18]]

12

2.2 Basic Evolving Tree [Adapted from [35]] 23

2.3 Overview of the construction and operation of the

WEBSOM system [Adapted from [41]]

28

2.4 The schematic diagram of the proposed approach

[Adapted from[32]]

30

3.1 Activities and steps use to develop the academic

supporting system [Adapted from [46]]

34

3.2 Simplex communication 35

3.3 Illustration on the operation of the E-notification system 38

3.4 Point-to-multipoint messaging 39

3.5 Flow chart for overall process for the terminal program 40

3.6 The general schematic diagram of the proposed approach 43

3.7 Keywords matching process 43

3.8 Sequences of keywords in document matrix form 44

3.9 Keywords matching process 45

3.10 Construction procedure of the ETree system 46

3.11 Flow chart for the textual-preprocessing phase 47

3.12 Stop words elimination 48

xiii

3.13 Abstract content from the raw patent technical article 50

3.14 Textual-preprocessing 50

3.15 Document matrix 50

3.16 Split node and its children nodes 51

3.17 Trunk node and leaf nodes 52

3.18 Fundamental operations of Evolving Tree 54

3.19 Best matching unit 55

3.20 Finding BMU for two nodes which owned the same

matching value

56

3.21 Overall flow chart for ETree construction phase 57

3.22 Visualization for ETree based Automated Document

Clustering System

58

4.1 Login Form 60

4.2 Main Menu Form 60

4.3 Students information selection based on year of study

form

61

4.4 Students information selection based on courses form 61

4.5 Students information based on program selection form 62

4.6 Students information management form 62

4.7 Short message service based on year of study form 63

4.8 Short message service selection based on courses form 63

4.9 Short message service selection based on program 64

4.10 Short message service management 64

4.11 Change login password form 65

xiv

4.12 System exit form 65

4.13 Introduction form 69

4.14 Main Menu form 69

4.15 Search form 70

4.16 Training result of ETree system for 50% of similarity

threshold

74

4.17 ETree Map for 50% of similarity threshold 75

4.18 Summary in pie chart for result obtained in 50% of

similarity threshold

78

4.19 Training result of ETree for 40% of similarity threshold 79

4.20 ETree Map for 40% of similarity threshold 80

4.21 Summary in pie chart for result obtained in 40% of

similarity threshold

82

4.22 Training result of ETree for 30% of similarity threshold 83

4.23 ETree Map for 30% of similarity threshold 84

4.24 Summary in pie chart for result obtained in 30% of

similarity threshold

86

4.25 Training result of ETree for 20% of similarity threshold 87

4.26 ETree Map for 20% of similarity threshold 88

4.27 Summary in pie chart for result obtained in 20% of

similarity threshold

90

4.28 System accuracy comparison 95

4.29 System accuracy versus similarity threshold for 100, 150,

265 articles.

109

x

LIST OF TABLES

Page

3.1 Trained result 52

3.2 Matching result for Figure 3.18 55

3.3 Calculation to Find the BMU for two nodes which

owned the same matching value

56

4.1 List of the 50 selected ENCON 2008 articles 71

4.2 Conference articles and their cluster with 50% of

similarity threshold

76

4.3 Conference articles and their cluster with 40% of

similarity threshold

80

4.4 Conference articles and their cluster with 30% of

similarity threshold

84

4.5 Conference articles and their cluster with 20% of

similarity threshold

88

4.6 Validation result for 50% of precision 91

4.7 Validation result for 40% of precision 92

4.8 Validation result for 30% of precision 93

4.9 Validation result for 20% of precision 94

4.10 Overall system accuracy 94

4.11 List of the 100 selected ENCON 2008 articles 96

4.12 List of the 150 selected ENCON 2008 articles 98

xi

4.13 List of the 265 full set of ENCON 2008 articles 102

4.14 System accuracy 108

ii

ABSTRACT

Academic supporting tool is defined as an educational development services

which is developed as a guide to universities and colleges in order to support and

help in academic progress. In this thesis, two academic supporting tools; e.g., an

electronic notification system, and an Evolving Tree (ETree) based automated

documents clustering system are developed, and evaluated. The electronic

notification system with Short Message Service (SMS) technology is developed to

facilitate the communication among lecturers and students. It can be viewed as a

mobile, efficient and environment-friendly communication platform among lecturers

and students. It allows latest news, general notices, instant class cancellation alerts

and etc. to be delivered to students instantly, through SMS. The electronic

notification system is developed using Visual Basic language. Practicality of the

developed system is further evaluated with the help of a lecturer in UNIMAS.

Positive results are obtained. The ETree based automated documents clustering

system is developed to allow conference papers to be clustered, organized and

visualized based on their abstract similarity. Classification of conference papers is

always a tedious, time-consuming and expensive task, to be carried out by

experience academicians. The developed system is a decision supporting tool for

conference organizers and technical committees. It eases the task of classification of

conference papers. With regards to the study of neural network, ETree is proposed

as an improvement of Self Organizing Map (SOM). As compared with conventional

SOM, ETree does not require map size to be predetermined. From literature, the use

of SOM in document clustering, organization and visualization problems has been

iii

widely reported. However, from literature review, the main application of ETree

centered at image processing, and no report on the use of ETree in document

clustering, organization and visualization problems have been found. To some extent,

this piece of work can be viewed as an earlier investigation on the use ETree for

document classification problems. The ETree based automated documents

clustering system is evaluated with information from Engineering Conference

(ENCON) 2008. Correctness of the clustering result is further evaluated with the

help of a Technical Committee from ENCON 2008. Experiments show that it is a

potential system, and positive results are obtained.

iv

ABSTRAK

Academic Supporting Tool adalah satu perkhidmatan pembangunan pendidikan

yang dicipta sebagai satu panduan untuk menyokong dan membantu universiti dan

kolej dalam kemajuan ilmiah. Dalam tesis ini, dua sistem penyokong akademik iaitu

sistem pemberitahuan secara elektronik dan sistem klasifikasi bagi dokumen secara

automatik berdasarkan algoritma Evolving Tree (ETree) telah dihasilkan dan dinilai.

Sistem pemberitahuan secara elektronik dengan menggunakan teknologi Khidmat

Pesanan Rungkas dihasilkan untuk memudahkan komunikasi antara pensyarah dan

pelajar. Sistem ini merupakan satu teknologi mudah alih, cekap dan mesra untuk

meningkatkan komunikasi antara pensyarah dan pelajar. Ini membolehkan berita

terkini, notis am, notis pembatalan kelas dan sebagainya diumumkan kepada pelajar

melalui perkhidmatan SMS. Sistem pemberitahuan secara elektronik ini telah

dihasilkan dengan menggunakan perisian Visual Basic. Sistem ini telah dinilai dari

segi praktikal dengan bantuan seorang pensyarah di UNIMAS. Maklum balas positif

telah diperolehi melalui penilaian ini. Sistem klasifikasi bagi dokumen secara

automatik telah dihasilkan untuk membolehkan kertas persidangan diklasifikasikan

dan disusun berdasarkan persamaan abstrak dokumen. Klasifikasi bagi kertas

persidangan merupakan satu tugas yang agak membosankan, mengambil masa,

memerlukan kos yang tinggi dan perlu dilaksanakan oleh ahli-ahli akademik yang

berpengalaman. Sistem yang dihasilkan merupakan satu alat sokongan dalam

membantu pihak penganjur dan jawatankuasa persidangan membuat keputusan. Ia

juga meringankan tugas pengelasan kertas persidangan. Berdasarkan pengajian

dalam bidang Neural Network, ETree diperkenalkan sebagai satu peningkatan bagi

v

Self-Organizing Map (SOM). Berbanding dengan konvensional SOM, ETree tidak

perlu menentukan saiz peta terlebih dahulu. Dari kajian literasi, penggunaan SOM

dalam pengelasan, organisasi dan pembayangan dokumen telah dinyatakan secara

meluas. Bagaimanapun, daripada kajian literatur, aplikasi ETree hanya tertumpu

pada pemprosesan imej. Manakala tiada laporan mengenai penggunaan ETree dalam

pengelasan, penyusunan dan pembayangan dokumen dinyatakan. Kajian ini boleh

dikatakan sebagai satu pertemuan baru bagi penggunaan ETree dalam pengelasan

dokumen. Sistem ini telah dinilai dengan menggunakan maklumat yang diperolehi

daripada Engineering Conference (ENCON) 2008 yang dianjurkan oleh UNIMAS.

Ketepatan keputusan sistem telah dinilai dengan bantuan seorang ahli teknikal

jawatankuasa daripada ENCON 2008. Keputusan eksperimen menunjukkan bahawa

ia merupakan satu sistem yang berpotensi dan maklum balas positif telah diperolehi

melalui penilaian ini.

1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Overview

An academic supporting tool becomes very important and popular nowadays

with respond to internal and external pressures for accountability in higher education.

An academic supporting tool is an educational development services which is

developed as a guide to universities and colleges in order to support and help in

academic progress.

One of the popular existing academic supporting tools is the Endnote [1].

Endnote is a Personal Bibliographic Software (PBS) package designed to manage

bibliographic references to all kinds of information such as printed sources, non-

printed materials, electronic resources and etc [1]. It is used for managing references

for those involved in teaching, research and supervising postgraduate research

students. Bournemouth is one of the universities who purchased a three years site

license for Endnote [2]. Another example is Morpheus, an academic support system

at University Malaysia Sarawak [3]. It is developed to support students’ and

academicians’ teaching-learning process. Morpheus is a free learning management

system that enables you to create powerful, flexible, and engaging online learning

experiences. It is designed to support a learning style, known to educators as Social

2

Constructive Pedagogy. Morpheus enables you to add static course materials,

interactive course materials as well as other social course materials [3].

The purpose of this project is to develop an environment-friendly system to

support and help in academic progress.

1.2 Problem Statements

Conventional notice board in a university campus is a paper-based offline

notification system which allows lectures to display messages and announcements to

their students by posted printed or written information [4]. Problems of this

approach arise when students cannot receive the instant news like classes have been

removed or cancelled at the last moment on time. Therefore the electronic

notification system is proposed to provide an efficient and environment-friendly

platform to enhance communication between lecturers and students.

Classification of conference papers is a tedious, yet important task for

conference organizers, as the number of technical papers increases. With a growing

amount of conference paper, there is a need to develop a computer aided system to

support this task [5]. In this project, an Evolving Tree (ETree) based supporting

system is developed to cluster conference papers based on their abstract similarity.

The ETree is then visualized in two-dimensional (2-D) similarity plot.

3

1.3 Objectives

The main objective of this project is to develop an environment-friendly system

to support and help in academic progress. In order to achieve this, several objectives

must be reached:

The objectives of this project as follow:

i. To develop an Electronic Notification System that able to provide efficient

and environment-friendly platform to enhance communication between the

lectures and students.

ii. To develop an Evolving Tree (ETree) based Automated Document Clustering

system to cluster conferences paper based on their abstract similarity.

iii. To visualize the ETree in two-dimensional similarity plot.

iv. To investigate on the use of ETree technique in document clustering problem.