Towards a formal specification of course structures

Explanations

The examples shown here emphasize that with the help of XML technology and formally specified unit and course structure data, computations can be performed which bring benefits to both students and staff of the university. The following examples are based on the  exemplary unitdefinitions shown in section below. The examples comprise:

• Example 1: Finding out prerequisite dependencies between units
• Example 2: Checking unit enrolments
• Example 3: Generating solutions for sequences
• Example 4: Generating solutions for sequences and considering student enrolment data
  

All files mentioned are contained in the ZIP archive deliverables.zip.

Unitdefinitions facts database for testing

In order to test the developed Prolog programs, a small facts database of unitdefinitions is required. These facts are generated by performing an XSL transformation on a set of unitdefinitions which are contained in the file unitdatabase-example.xml. Figure 1 shows the dependencies between these units in terms of possible choices. The used XSL stylesheet is contained in the file unitdatabase2prologunitdatabase.xsl, and the generated facts are contained in the file unitdatabase-example.pl. Note that unit c is only attached with 3 credit points and all other units are attached with 6 credit points.

Figure 1: Dependencies between the exemplary units