Enric Mor

E-learning personalization based on itineraries and long-term navigational behavior

In this paper we describe a practical framework for studying then a navigational behavior of the users of an e-learning environment integrated in a virtual campus. The students navigate through the web based virtual campus interacting with learning resources which are structured following the SCORM e-learning standard. Our main goal is to design a usage mining tool for analyzing such user navigational behavior and for extracting relevant information that can be used to validate several aspects related to virtual campus design and usability but also to determine the optimal scheduling for each course depending on user profile. We intend to extend these quencing capabilities of the SCORM standard to include the concept of recommended itinerary, by combining teachers expertise with learned experience acquired by system usage analysis.

Towards personalization in digital libraries through ontologies

Purpose – To describe a browsing and searching personalization system for digital libraries based on the use of ontologies for describing the relationships between all the elements which take part in a digital library scenario of use.Design/methodology/approach – Identification of all the desired functionalities and requirements that are necessary to fully integrate the use of a digital library in an e‐learning environment, and the basic elements that are used to build the ontology that describes such scenario.Findings – The elements that determine the functionalities of the desired personalization system: first, the users profile, including navigational history and user preferences; and second, the information collected from the navigational behavior of the digital library users.Research limitations/implications – The ontology is not complete. In fact, the ontology in itself will evolve with the new apparition of desired functionalities and requirements of the personalization system.Practical implicatio...

User Navigational Behavior in e-Learning Virtual Environments

In this paper, we describe the navigational behavior of the students of an e-learning virtual environment, in order to determine whether such navigational patterns are related to the academic performance achieved by the students or not, and which behaviors can be identified as more successful. As an example, a subset of students taking a degree in computer science in a completely virtual online university is selected as the matter of study. Three levels of analysis are described: a session level, where students perform a few actions in a single session logged to the virtual campus; a course level, where all single sessions are joined to form a course navigational pattern; and a lifelong learning level, where students enroll in several subjects each academic semester. A simple experiment is outlined for the course level to demonstrate the possibilities of such analysis in a virtual e-learning environment. This experiment shows that the information collected in this level is useful for understanding user behavior and the relationship with his or her academic achievements, and that some intuitive ideas about the relevance of specific user actions or particularities can be also better explained.

User Centered Design of a Learning Object Repository

This work outlines the design process of a user centered learning object repository. A repository should foster the development and acquisition of both generic and specific informational competencies. The results of the first stage of the user centered design process are presented which provide a clear understanding of user and task requirements and the context of use. A user study was conducted using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. A qualitative approach was performed through the content analysis of 24 in-depth interviews achieved through a random stratified sampling method. Regarding the quantitative approach, more than 5 million student navigation sessions were processed in order to know the real information behavior accomplished in the virtual campus and more specifically all the services and resources used and the search actions carried out by users. Our aim is to achieve a thorough informational behavior analysis that involves access, treatment, integration, evaluation, creation and communication of information for learning purposes which will be useful for integrating learning object repositories in virtual learning environments.

The sell project: a learning tool for e-learning logic

The SELL project described here is the design and development of a tool for assisting the learning of Logic in the context of a wholly online CS degree using a web-based learning environment. This tool should provide guidance, interactive feedback, and continuous assessment for Logic course students, covering major topics in an introductory course (natural deduction, resolution and semantics in propositional and predicate logic). The process of the design, implementation, use and development of the resulting tool, coined Logic E-learning Assistant, is presented.

Designing Learning Tools: The Case of a Competence Assessment Tool

Advancements in technology offer new challenges and opportunities for online education. The interaction design of digital learning and assessment tools directly influence the learning experience. The aim of this work is to show the process of user-centered design and development of an online assessment tool that allows setting, monitoring and displaying the achievements of educational skills and competences. The main challenges addressed were: dealing with a rich and complex educational context; researching the actual needs of the actors involved and managing the different requirements for the tool; the process to generate design solutions and the evaluation of the tool. It was evaluated in a real case scenario in a virtual learning environment of a fully online higher education institution.

User-centered design gymkhana

The User-centered design (UCD) Gymkhana is a tool for human-computer interaction practitioners to demonstrate through a game the key user-centered design methods and how they interrelate in the design process. The target audiences are other organizational departments unfamiliar with UCD but whose work is related to the definition, creation, and update of a product or service.

An empirical evaluation of classifier combination schemes for predicting user navigational behavior

In this paper we present a simple classification system for predicting user behavior when browsing a Web site devoted to informing about university degrees. More than building a very accurate classifier, we want to study which kind of combination scheme performs better in front of a complexity constraint. A set of marks embedded in the Web pages being visited by each user is used as the input for a classification system which decides whether the user will be interested in accessing other related parts of the Web site or not. We compare two different classification systems: the first one is built using decision trees for the whole data set, with the aim of studying user profiles and variable importance, while the second one combines simple classifiers based on small decision trees using a combination of the voting and cascading paradigms, in order to make predictions which evolve during the period of time the Web site is collecting data. Results show that it is possible to extract useful information for studying user profiles and for predicting user behavior using small decision trees.

e-Assessment for Skill Acquisition in Online Engineering Education: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract This chapter presents a literature review of e-assessment in online higher education with a special focus on skill acquisition in engineering education. Skill acquisition is important in engineering education, especially skills involving practical problem solving to cater to the demands of a rapidly changing industry. Therefore, knowledge and understanding gained from learning materials alone is not enough without gaining the higher-order cognitive skills needed to solve practical problems. In this case, assessment can be used to evaluate whether students are capable of achieving the required skills as well as for continuously improving engineering education. This chapter first addresses the general aspects: assessment in the form of e-assessment; skill and knowledge assessment; supporting learning through formative e-assessment; standards, specifications and models to design and develop e-assessment systems that are interoperable and secure; previous research on skill acquisition in engineering education; and, as the focus point, the challenges and opportunities in skill acquisition in online engineering education.

Engagement Analytics: A Microlevel Approach to Measure and Visualize Student Engagement

Learner disengagement is a persisting issue in the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. Student engagement is dynamically constituted by the behavioural, cognitive and emotional dimensions of engagement in a learning environment. Although strongly linked with academic achievement, much of the details of engagement becomes lost in a retrospective measurement. Timely and microlevel data on the other hand has the ability to enrich the traditional learning analytics dataset. From a pilot study carried out at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, where we have designed a self-reported data capture module that collects microlevel engagement data, initial results suggest the validity of the proposed approach and data. In this paper we emphasize how our approach enables better understanding of the student learning process and their characteristics such as cognitive patterns, emotional states and behaviours that leads to academic success and also enable richer feedback from teachers and informed decision making by the institution.