Developing computational intelligence method for competence assessment through expert system: An institutional development approach

An expert system is computer software that solves real world problems using human knowledge and reasoning skills. Knowledge base is the heart and mind of such system where knowledge is stored in the form of rules, databases, heuristics and facts. The key conceptual challenge in this approach is the exploitation of the domain knowledge that is vast and mainly in the minds of experts and is a major bottleneck in development. The field of Knowledge engineering addresses these challenges by applying AI principles to add new knowledge in the system and extract information with explanation with the powerful mechanism. The developed system is an example of such system that allows a user to add decision making rules and provide platform to add new facts from the existing knowledge, by applying heuristics techniques and methods associated with it. The evaluation of human resources is the continuous process in any organization. It involves a complex and complicated process to match the right competencies for the right job as per the requirements with in the organization. It requires the years of experience for the competence assessment and performance manager to build up competent team and utilize the talent of the team to get the job performed in an efficient manner. The development of expert system helps in acquiring the knowledge of the domain expert by the process of knowledge engineering to represent it in the form of rules and facts. Consequently it helps us to develop the inference process by applying the Heuristics obtained by various statistical techniques such as regression analysis, classification analysis. This inference process becomes instrumental to constitute the production rules that help in decision making for the various stake holders in order to perform their work in a strategic manner. To achieve this purpose, the developed Inference engine works both forward (evaluation) and backward chaining (sensitivity analysis). In the paper we have presented the design and development of a system that helps the managers in educational institutions to screen, recruit, manage and develop the team of competent faculty members for the enhancement of teaching and learning process. The knowledge elicitation technique used for developing the knowledge base of the competence and performance assessment system is the statistical survey method. The results of analysis helped us to develop the inference engine and decision making rules. The developed system helps to identify a right person for the right job, to add new designations as per the organization's mission and vision planned by the management and makes a mechanized system for its growth. The system is designed for the Indian higher technical education system.