From the Discovery of Students Access Patterns in E-learning Including Web 2.0 Resources to the Prediction and Enhancement of Students Outcome

Abstract

Firstly, a new software module for analysis of students\u27 interactions has been developed. It largely enhances the standard Moodle reports. The module, called Merlin-Mo, covers all the initial functionality required to meet users\u27 needs. It offers very good and easy to use interfaces that enclose potent search engines into the data model to look and organize dynamically data about interactions. Data is treated with useful statistical and interactive visualizations that generate good and easy to understand representations of data to help teachers in the process of analyzing students learning patterns. The module has been developed following Moodle standards to obtain a perfect automatic integration into a running Moodle LMS. Merlin-Mo module has been developed to support two languages, English and Spanish; those and other server settings are automatically adopted from the host Moodle user settings. Lastly, it has also been adjusted to be seen in the main market browsers. Furthermore, teachers can predict and enhance students\u27 outcome by analyzing how students acceded the different parts of the courses, where significant differences can be observed. By adopting policies that prevent from wrong students behaviors on early stages much better results can be obtained. To help in the analysis of learning behaviors using the system many, the results can be analyzed grouped in three general types of access\u27 patterns, namely: differences among morning and evening sessions, amount of accesses by exam performance, evolution of the access patterns through out the year