Abstract:

In higher education, improving learning and learning success are goals of general improvement. Lecturers teaches content and students acquire that content in an efficient way. To structure content, learning element categories are evaluated from the student's point of view in higher education area. The aim is to validate given definitions of ten learning element categories within a Learning Management System (LMS).

This paper evaluates a categorization of learning elements for organizing learning content in online education within LMSs. Therefore, ten categories of learning elements and corresponding definitions were defined in a previous work as base for this paper. The learning elements to examine are manuscript, exercise, quiz, brief overview, learning goal, summary, collaboration tool, auditory additional material, textual additional material, and visual additional material. To validate the definitions and to get improvements to each learning element a survey is processed. Beside the demographic data questions, the survey consists of two questions to the acceptance of the definitions and asks for improvements. 148 students between the ages 19 and 35 participate in the survey in summer term 2023. The education level of the participants ranges from undergraduates to Ph.D. students.

The results of this paper are that more than 80% accept the given definitions. Some definitions of the learning elements are changed, but the changes are restricted to additions of maximal four words. This categorization of learning elements could lead to improvements in learning by giving the content more structure. With the structure students get the possibility to learn with preferred learning elements which could lead to more success in learning and to a decreasing dropout rate in universities. In the future, the learning elements allow to classify content within LMSs with the goal of generating individual learning paths. Furthermore, our project will integrate these learning elements, use them to generate learning paths, and could set a new standard in the way of personalized learning.

Keywords:

Learning elements, learning management system, learning objects, questionnaire, higher education area, content organization.