An application of Holland´s genetic algorithm for the problem of planning advisors in Virtual Learning Environments

Distance Education (DE) is a teaching modality capable of providing professional formation for people with limited access to university education. For this end, a set of computational tools is required in assisting the teaching and learning process [6]. Moreover, a common obstacle for DE is the issue of identifying possible advisors for those students in the process of writing monographs. As such, this has become an important issue for researches, placing their emphasis on the idea of working the interests of students, teachers and education managers. This paper demonstrates how Holland´s genetic algorithm can be used to create a tool that uses a set of requirements provided by education managers in order to, automatically, do the identification of an advisor profile that is compatible with the interests of a student. In addition, this paper also presents an example of the application of such tool in a DE undergraduate course of the Federal University of Alagoas.