WS-ADVISING: a Reusable and reconfigurable microservices‐based platform for effective academic advising

Academic advising is essential for students’ success at the university level. This paper proposes a reusable and reconfigurable microservices-based platform called WS-ADVISING as a means of supporting effective academic advising efforts. WS-ADVISING will address several weaknesses related to the traditional academic advising process by offering enhanced and value-added online services that have proven beneficial for both advisors and students. These services will help advisors to better manage their large quotas of students while also helping students follow their academic plans more accurately and efficiently. WS-ADVISING has been developed and tested as an independent platform used to improve existing features offered by the Taibah University e-portal. In order to evaluate user satisfaction, two questionnaires were circulated among 200 undergraduate students and 36 advisors: the first collected an overview of users’ perceptions of advising features currently offered by the Taibah University e-portal, while the second assessed the usability of the proposed WS-ADVISING platform. More than 77% of users surveyed stated that they were satisfied with WS-ADVISING and rated it as “effective”; meanwhile, over 81% also stated that they considered this platform an efficient solution for improved academic advising.