Building a Decision Tree Model for Academic Advising Affairs Based on the Algorithm C 4-5

The ability to recognize students’ weakness and solve any problem that may confront them in timely fashion is always a target for all educational institutions. Thus, colleges and universities implement the so-called academic advising affairs. On the academic advisor relies the responsibility of solving any problem that may confront students’ learning progress. This paper shows how the advisor can benefit from data mining techniques, namely decision trees techniques. The C4.5 algorithm is used as a method for building such trees. The output is evaluated based on the accuracy measure, Kappa measure, and ROC area. The difference between the registered and gained credit hours is considered as the main attribute on which advisor can rely.