Title: Applying fuzzy logic decision-making approach to analyse the students' self-management perspective in professional education

Authors: K. Ravichandran; K. Venkatesh; K. Saravanan; R. Muruganandham; S. Muralidharan

Addresses: Department of Entrepreneurship Studies, Madurai Kamraj University, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Professional education has become very much challenging as it is competitive, research-oriented and result-oriented. The students have to struggle and toil to cope with their academic schedule. As the day to day activities are hectic and tightly scheduled, the students have to balance their academic and personal life, for which emotional stability is very much essential. Stress is the main factor responsible for weakening the emotional balance of students. This paper has made an attempt to peruse and analyse the causes and effects of stress using an optimisation technique with fuzzy logic decision-making (FLDM). This paper has applied multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool as demonstrated by Tseng and Klein (1992) for analysing the above scenario and has offered valid findings and valuable suggestions. The purpose of this paper is to understand and demonstrate the concepts of fuzzy logic decision-making (FLDM) approach. The methodology involves identifying the key parameters and developing the fuzzy sets for the same. From the developed fuzzy sets membership grades are calculated, tabulated and ranked as per fuzzy norms. The study is confined to the students of the engineering (UG all years of information technology and mechanical engineering). The study reveals the various stress causing factors and suggests some stress relieving methods.

Keywords: higher education; fuzzy logic; fuzzy decision making; personal life; stress; student self-management; professional education; emotional stability; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; engineering education; fuzzy sets.

DOI: 10.1504/IJENM.2016.080456

International Journal of Enterprise Network Management, 2016 Vol.7 No.4, pp.285 - 297

Received: 29 Nov 2014
Accepted: 07 Mar 2015
Published online: 24 Nov 2016 *

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