Agricultural Major Courses Recommendation Using Apriori Algorithm Applied in China Open University System

In open and distance education field, making use of data mining technologies to understand students' practical needs and usage habits about professional courses, which will greatly enhance students learning. China Open University system is Chinese largest scale organization engaging in open and distance education, and it has taken Chinese education ministry's a rural education project, called "one college student in one village". The system should teach nationwide students agricultural professional courses through network. This paper proposes a professional courses recommendation scheme for agricultural major students, including "student course selection rules producing module" and "student course selection rules searching and matching module". In the overall scheme's core functional design, Apriori algorithm is improved to find local and global frequent course-selection sets, and local and global strong association rules about student professional courses selection, thus to recommend professional courses more intelligently according to student practical needs. Proposed scheme is applied in China Open University system's Animal Husbandry and Veterinary major, a part of "one college student in one village" project, and process of providing course recommendation service by using proposed scheme is illustrated.