An Automatic Document Classification System to Support Project-Based Learning Process in Engineering Education: A Case of Industrial Engineering

The use of project-based learning (PBL) has increased in most of engineering schools, and many engineering students now carry out capstone design projects as a form of student-directed learning. Although colleges have provided enormous numbers of references through on-and off-library, students have still a lot of difficulties in utilizing such information and spend much time to verify the information that they should use and whether necessary information is contained. As such, we have developed an automatic document classification system (ADCS) that functions as the core of a knowledge management system (KMS). The ADCS classifies documents that are similar according to representative terms by using an unsupervised learning method, and they provide integrated search and categorized search. This system is expected to provide students who are having difficulty in PBL environment and improve their search accuracy in large quantities of materials.