Towards the development of decision support in academic environments

Due to increased competition in higher education environments, the universities adopted modern information and communication technologies (ICT) with the aim of completing quality educational processes. They plan to use more efficiently the collected data, develop tools so that to collect and direct management information, in order to support managerial decision making. The collected data could be utilized to evaluate quality, perform analyses and diagnoses, evaluate dependability to the standards and practices of curricula and syllabi, and suggest alternatives in decision processes. Data mining (DM) and decision support systems (DSS) are well suited technologies to provide decision support in the higher education environments, by generating and presenting relevant information and knowledge towards quality improvement of education processes and management.