Evaluation and prioritization of software packages for remote education assistance using picture fuzzy comprehensive distance-based ranking approach

Abstract

Growing competition for online education has motivated the need for software packages assessment. Selecting the most suitable software package depends on several criteria, therefore, the decision-making approaches can be more appropriate to deal with such types of problems. To this aim, this work introduces a picture fuzzy information-based ranking approach for evaluating and prioritizing the software packages by means of several criteria. This approach firstly derives the weights of invited decision-making experts using the picture fuzzy distance measure-based procedure. To this aim, novel distance measure is proposed for describing the difference between picture fuzzy sets with its usefulness in comparison with the prior developed distance measures. To aggregate the opinions of decision-making experts about the performance of each software with respect to considered criteria, the picture fuzzy weighted averaging operator is utilized and created the aggregated decision matrix. Next, the criteria weights are calculated with the amalgamation of objective and subjective weights through picture fuzzy standard deviation model and picture fuzzy ranking comparison model, respectively. Finally, a picture fuzzy extension of comprehensive distance-based ranking model is presented to solve the multi-criteria software packages evaluation problem, which validates its rationality and feasibility. The acquired results prove that the software package “Google Workspace for Education Plus” is the most suitable choice due to its lowest comprehensive degree among the others. The stability and robustness of the outcomes are further verified through sensitivity and comparative analyses.