A framework for monitoring the unsupervised educational process and adapting the content and activities to students' needs

Abstract

The growth of internet and the evolution of supporting infrastructures motivated universities and other educational institutions to adopt new teaching methods. These unsupervised methods are focused on the dissemination of the educational material and the evaluation of the users through tests and activities. The user behavior is not monitored and the performance of users cannot be reasoned in most cases. We strongly believe that the monitoring and analysis of the users' behavior in a distance course may help on improving the course plan and the quality of the reading material. In this direction we define the framework for an unsupervised educational process that combines reading material and examinations and monitors the user performance throughout the educational process. We detail on how this framework can be implemented using web technologies, thus creating a web-based educational application. We additionally define the methodology and tools that can be employed for monitoring and processing users' data. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.