Construction of a socio-affective profile model of students in a virtual learning environment

Abstract

This article presents a model of the student’s socio-affective profile in Distance Education (DE), with the purpose of recommending personalized pedagogical strategies. The use of Recommendation Systems (RS) to customize education has been a trend, as well as the inclusion of affective or social aspects in the student profile. However, it is verified that the use of this type of information is done in an isolated way, since no investigations were detected that simultaneously contemplate, in the composition of the profile, the social and affective dimensions. Facing this gap, this article presents the socio-affective profile of a student in a virtual learning environment (VLE), elaborated through the application of two case studies developed with undergraduate students at a Brazilian university in the academic periods of 2017 and 2018. This study was qualitative, involving the analysis of the affective and social data of the students. As a result, a model was conceived of 20 affective properties, six related to social interaction indicators and five related to personality factors. The profile created is a key piece in the design of the recommendation model of pedagogical strategies in VLE that is being elaborated.