An Ontology-Driven Rule Enforcement Framework for Governing the Student Evaluation Lifecycle in Sri Lankan Higher Education

The aspects of governance, regulation, and transparency are essential parts of modern educational service management systems and, especially, of the Student Evaluation Lifecycle (SEL). On the other hand, student evaluation processes in higher education insti-tutions operate with inconsistent policies, humanly understood regulations, inefficient control procedures, and informal enforce-ment of rules, which can result in inconsistencies, lack of transparency, and non-compliance with the SEL process. There is no study that would explore the problem of integration of governance requirements, ontology-based rule representation, and rule enforce-ment processes for student evaluation. The ontology of rules and rule-enforcement sub-framework (RORESF) proposed in this study includes institutional governance rules and rule-enforcement of regulations related to SEL. What makes the ontology of rules special is the combination of rule ontology, governance rules, and multilevel business rule enforcement in a reusable framework tailored to evaluate higher education processes. The ontology is developed following a classification of business rules and the use of an action enablement rule paradigm together with various forms of enforcement mechanisms. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is employed to model the rule ontology, governed processes, actors, decision points, and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that the process becomes transparent. A hybrid approach that includes design science research methodology (DSRM) and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was applied in this research. The results show that ontology systematically identifies and represents governance rules and links institutional regulations with evaluation procedures with the help of transparent BPMN models. Experts evaluated the ontology and found it to be correct, complete, consistent, and comprehensible.