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Learner modelling: systematic review of the literature from the last 5 years

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Abstract

The field of adaptive e-learning is continuously developing. More research is being conducted in this area as adaptive e-learning aims to provide learners with adaptive learning paths and content, according to their individual characteristics and needs, which makes e-learning more efficient and effective. The learner model, which is a representation of different learner’s characteristics, plays a key role in this adaptation. This paper presents a systematic literature review about learner modelling during the last 5 years, describing the different modelled characteristics and the adopted modelling techniques and modeling types: automatic modeling and collaborative modeling. 107 publications were selected and analyzed, and six categories of the modelled characteristics were identified. This literature review contributes to the identification of the learners’ individual traits and presents the most used modelling techniques for each of them. It also identifies the latest research trends of Learner Modeling and generates future research directions in this field.

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Notes

  1. In the context of this review, empirical studies refer to studies that conducted an experiment to test their proposed Learner Model, there is no limitation to how the evaluation of the effectiveness of the model was done, works aiming to validate the feasibility of the model, its usefulness, its accuracy or the learner’s satisfaction with the ALS were included in this review.

  2. Nine works did not mention the used modeling techniques for the learner characteristics included in their model, however we chose not to exclude these works from this review because they present other novel aspects that we considered interesting, mainly concerning the included characteristics.

  3. For the contributions that used a different type of modelling for each of the modelled characteristics we accounted them as separate works.

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  1. Mohammadia School of Engineers, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Rabat, Morocco

    Abir Abyaa, Mohammed Khalidi Idrissi & Samir Bennani

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  1. Abir Abyaa
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Appendices

Appendix A

See Table 1.

Table 1 A view of the modelled characteristics for the included publications
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Appendix B

See Table 2.

Table 2 A view of the used modelling techniques for each included work
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Abyaa, A., Khalidi Idrissi, M. & Bennani, S. Learner modelling: systematic review of the literature from the last 5 years. Education Tech Research Dev 67, 1105–1143 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-018-09644-1

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