Abstract:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of digital course rooms, where teachers provide their learning materials, increased dramatically. While these platforms are crucial for providing teaching materials, they often fall short in addressing individual student needs. A system within an academic setting, capable of creating and presenting individual learning paths for each student, can solve these issues. These paths are composed of various learning elements - defined in our previous work as units of educational content with which a learner works.

Currently, there is no suitable system that enables the integration of learning path generating algorithms into a digital course room. Therefore we present an application that enables this integration into the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS). More precisely, this paper presents a Moodle plugin together with its framework. It describes the mechanism for effectively collecting data from Moodle, which AI algorithms then use to generate personalized learning paths. Subsequently these paths are visualized with the help of the Moodle plugin.

We started with a set of requirements and use cases for the interface connecting Moodle to the AI system, which were established with a group of experts. Based on the requirements, various relevant technologies were assessed, and the best ones were chosen for implementation.

Following that, the paper develops a strategy for software structuring as well as an architecture, focusing on performance, modularity, and ease of deployment for widespread use. Furthermore, the architecture ensures a simple method for integrating the algorithms. Afterwards, the framework's concrete implementation is described. A technique for enriching learning elements with metadata is presented, and additionally a concept for presenting these learning elements within a hierarchy. Moreover, it is shown how questionnaire responses and learning analytics are utilized for data collection. We cover in detail techniques for extracting and storing data from the Moodle database, as well as methods for customizing Moodle course rooms and a standard API for incorporating AI algorithms.

Finally, the paper discusses the application of the proposed framework in an actual course and how student feedback is collected, which could enhance the framework. It concludes with an assessment of the outcomes obtained and prospects for the framework's future advancements.

Keywords:

Personalized Learning Paths, Learning Management System, Software Architecture, Moodle, Artificial Intelligence.