Abstract:

In educational research, non-personalized learning content increases learners' cognitive load, causing them to lower their performance and sometimes drop out of the course. Personalizing learning content with learners’ unique characteristics, like learning styles, personality traits, and learning strategies, is being suggested to improve learners’ success. Several theories exist for assessing learners’ unique characteristics. By the end of 2020, 71 learning style theories have been formulated, and research has shown that combining multiple learning style theories to recommend learning paths yields better results. As of the end of 2022, there is no single research that demonstrates a relationship between the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) based Felder-Silverman learning style model (FSLSM) dimensions, Big Five (BFI-10) based personality traits, and the Learning strategies in studying (LIST-K) based learning strategies factors for personalizing learning content.

In this paper, an innovative approach is proposed to estimate the relationship between these theories and map the corresponding learning elements to create personalized learning paths. Respective questionnaires were distributed to 297 higher education students for data collection. A three-step approach was formulated to estimate the relationship between the models. First, a literature search was conducted to find existing studies. Then, an expert interview was carried out with a group of one software engineering education research professor, three doctoral students, and two master’s students. Finally, the correlations between the students' questionnaire responses were calculated. To achieve this, a Bayesian Network was built with expert knowledge from the three-step approach, and the weights were learned from collected data. The probability of individual FSLSM learning style dimensions was estimated for a new test sample. Based on the literature, the learning elements were mapped to the respective FSLSM learning style dimensions and were initiated as learning paths to the learners.

The next steps are proposed to extend this framework and dynamically recommend learning paths in real time. In addition, the individual levels of learning style dimensions, personality traits, and learning strategies can be considered to improve the recommendations. Further, using probabilities for mapping learning elements to learning styles can increase the chance of initiating multiple learning paths for an individual learner.

Keywords:

Learning Management System (LMS), personalized learning paths, teaching innovations, student assessment, educational research, artificial intelligence.