How to design Web-based counseling systems

The purpose of a Web based counseling and evaluation system is to serve students and other interest groups of a virtual university. To develop a competent system requires careful design. We describe the requirements of our system, and specifically we discuss the criteria we have created to evaluate existing counseling systems. Criteria work as guidelines when designing a counseling system. The evaluation process helps us to construct technically more solid solutions for the needs of the Finnish virtual university counseling and evaluation system.