Virtual Career Advisor System with an Artificial Neural Network.

We introduce the Dolphin system, a novel virtual career advisor system that implements artificial neural networks trained on student data to provide students with career advice. The Dolphin system’s Experiences-to-Careers advisor uses an artificial neural network and takes as input a student’s course experience ratings and returns as output a career ranking. We present our methods to train, validate and test the Experiences-to-Careers advisor’s artificial neural network. We have implemented and deployed the Experiences-to-Careers advisor. We surveyed 39 students who used the Experiences-to-Careers advisor to receive career advice. Of these students, 5 students (12.8%) indicated that they prefer the Experiences-to-Careers advisor over a human advisor, 9 students (23.1%) indicated that they prefer a human advisor over the Experiences-to-Careers advisor and 25 students (64.1%) indicated that they prefer the Experiences-to-Careers advisor along with a human advisor. Of the 76.9% of the students who prefer the Experiences-to-Careers advisor over or along with a human advisor, a common reason for the students’ choice is that the Experiences-to-Careers advisor provides a perspective different from that of a human advisor.