Optimizing Assessment Placement and Curriculum Structure through Graph-Theoretic Analysis

The assurance of student learning is a crucial concern in contemporary education. Critical courses have a significant impact on how well university students do and, eventually, on graduation rates. Therefore, a key goal of decision-makers at universities should be to identify such courses. This article uses graph theory visualization and metrics to study existing curriculum structure. Gephi Software is used to visualize the courses as a network graph that shows, the courses, their prerequisites, generate course complexity and identify crucial courses of the curriculum. From the produced network, graph theory metrics is applied to calculate the courses complexity and cruciality and to identify the appropriate locations for assessment components or curriculum restructure. These techniques aid administrators and faculty to restructure the curricula and create an assessment scheme. In this work academic curriculum is treated as complex system where courses are represented by nodes and directed links between each course and their prerequisites based on course catalogue. This graph provides desirable features to analyze and visualize the course using metrics of mathematical graph theory. This work aims to explore the possibility to restructure the curriculum and provide assessment for critical courses to enhance graduation rates.