N-SOFT SETS ASSOCIATION RULE AND ITS APPLICATION FOR PROMOTION STRATEGY IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

Abstract

In everyday life, we always encounter obstacles in seeing the interrelationships between several events to make the right decisions. Universitas Terbuka is a pioneer in distance education that implements digital transformation for new student registration, student services, and alums. The obstacle faced is determining a suitable promotion strategy for new students. As a result, a representative model is needed to handle such cases. As an extension of soft sets, N-soft sets can handle decision-making for binary and non-binary assessments. However, research has yet to be related to N-soft sets decision-making in data mining, especially association rule classification. This article proposes a new combination of N-soft sets with Association Rule (NSSAR). This article also introduces and applies the decision-making procedure using NSSAR to real. The population is new students of Universitas Terbuka Jakarta in the 2023/2024 odd semester. Samples were taken randomly using a questionnaire—primary data obtained by 201 new students. The following results are obtained based on the processed sample data using the NSSAR algorithm: 1) new students from Universitas Terbuka Jakarta are predominantly from Vocational High Schools domiciled in Bekasi, majoring in Bachelor of Management from the Faculty of Economics and Business; 2) The most favorite media information used by new UT Jakarta students is Instagram. Based on the results, the NSSAR algorithm gave relationship patterns between the number of new students based on region, study program, diploma of origin, and information media. Therefore, policymakers should consider the right promotional strategy to increase the number of students.