Adaptive learning objects in the context of eco-connectivist communities using learning analytics

Abstract

Eco-connectivist communities are groups of individuals with similar characteristics, which emerge in a connectivist learning process within a knowledge ecology. ARMAGAeco-c is a reflexive and autonomic middleware for the management and optimization of eco-connectivist knowledge ecologies using description, prediction and prescription models. Adaptive Learning Objects are autonomic components that seek to personalize Learning Objects according to certain contextual information, such as learning styles of the learner's, technological restrictions, among other aspects. MALO is a system that allows the management of Adaptive Learning Objects. One of the main challenges of the connectivist learning process is the adaptation of the educational context to the student needs. One of them is the learning objects. For this reason, this work has two objectives, specifying a data analytics task to determine the learning style of a student in an eco-connectivist community and, adapting instances of Adaptive Learning Objects using the learning styles of the students in the communities. We use graph theory to identify the referential member of each eco-connectivist community, and a learning paradigm detection algorithm to identify the set of activities, strategies, and tools that Adaptive Learning Objects instances should have, according to the learning style of the referential member. To test our approach, a case study is presented, which demonstrates the validity of our approach.