A novel integrated approach to the execution of personalized and self-evolving learning pathways

摘要

One of the main challenges to be confronted by Higher Educational Institutions (HEI), so as to increase quality, is the provision of personalized education services in a wide range of educational settings, often beyond the course sequences historically offered to students. However, this personalization requires the continuous reconfiguration and adaptation of the selected academic plans, since each student is a unique case and both the educational options and current circumstances inside an educational institution change rapidly. In this paper, we present an innovative software environment offered to the academic staff and personnel that provides an integrated information technology solution concerning the dynamic and personalized composition of students' learning pathways during execution phase. The software environment comprises a process execution engine based on a semantic infrastructure (ontology) for configuring the learning pathways. During the execution of learning pathways, the system reasons over the mles and dynamically recommends the next steps of the learning. The implemented graphical user interface and the respective business logic for the recommendation and execution of the learning pathway processes is presented, alongside with a graphical mle generator interface for the definition of the rule-set for the learning pathways in a user-friendly way.