Monitoring Students at the University: Design and Application of a Moodle Plugin

Early detection of at-risk students is essential, especially in the university environment. Moreover, personalized learning has been shown to increase motivation and lower student dropout rates. At present, the average dropout rates among students following courses leading to the award of Spanish un...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Sáiz Manzanares, María Consuelo, Marticorena Sánchez, Raúl, García Osorio, César
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Burgos (UBU)
Repositorio:Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos (RIUBU)
OAI Identifier:oai:riubu.ubu.es:10259/6244
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10259/6244
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Student guidance
Personalized learning
Machine Learning
Moodle
Plugin
Enseñanza superior
Psicología
Informática
Education, Higher
Psychology
Computer science
Descripción
Sumario:Early detection of at-risk students is essential, especially in the university environment. Moreover, personalized learning has been shown to increase motivation and lower student dropout rates. At present, the average dropout rates among students following courses leading to the award of Spanish university degrees are around 18% and 42.8% for presential teaching and online courses, respectively. The objectives of this study are: (1) to design and to implement a Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle) plugin, “eOrientation”, for the early detection of at-risk students; (2) to test the effectiveness of the “eOrientation” plugin on university students. We worked with 279 third-year students following health sciences degrees. A process for extracting information records was also implemented. In addition, a learning analytics module was developed, through which both supervised and unsupervised Machine Learning techniques can be applied. All these measures facilitated the personalized monitoring of the students and the easier detection of students at academic risk. The use of this tool could be of great importance to teachers and university governing teams, as it can assist the early detection of students at academic risk. Future studies will be aimed at testing the plugin using the Moodle environment on degree courses at other universities.