Abstract:

The web-mining is a very effective data mining approach in the internet-based segments of the business world. In fact, it is applying data mining for sophisticated traffic analysis of websites based on the “logfiles” continuously being created on the server machine of the content provider. Its aim is to increase the efficiency of the given websites. These files have to be filtered, transformed, and processed so that valuable pieces of information characterizing the visitors’ behavior and motivation should be gained from it.
At the Department of Ergonomics and Psychology of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics – with the active participation of the Centre for Teacher Training and Engineering Education of the Budapest Tech – a research group has been composed aiming at revealing advantageous practical application possibilities of web-mining for the usage of educational materials based on SPSS Clementine and Google Analytics tools. The “user-centered” philosophy of these tools is in perfect harmony with the concepts of modern marketing, ergonomics and pedagogy. This new approach, as opposed to the traditional “page-centered” philosophy, puts the students’ goals and intentions to the center, and designs the services of the system accordingly, as a matter of fact, as we experienced, quite successfully.
Our approach is radically different from the traditional ones, as it is not based upon some “representative sampling” concerning the interaction of the learners and the material, but of the contrary, all interactions of all students can be analyzed at the fine resolution of single keystrokes and mouse clicks.
Approximately 100 learners of technical teacher training took part simultaneously in processing the Educational technology course, all the activities of whom performed in Moodle learning environment were registered in a log file.
In our paper we are going to present the first results exposed by quality testing in connection with the students’ learning and collaborative activities, the structure of the syllabus as well as the navigational opportunities.
The following conclusions are to be drawn after the evaluation of the results.
- Within a particular module students do not prefer the complete learning cycle that is the subsequent processing of syllabus units and the completion of the self-check test. During one visit, the processing of one or less frequently two syllabuses was dominant.
- Within a particular syllabus unit, mainly with respect to pp 1-2, a significant ”dropping off” was seen, which is to be interpreted as students’ orientation preceding actual learning.
- It is practical to incorporate self-check tests, similarly to the glossary, in the electronic syllabus, particularly at the end of the syllabus unit, the accomplishment of which is the prerequisite for opening the following syllabus unit.
- During development, a page finder window was also placed at the bottom of each page. This interfered with the sequential processing of the syllabus and resulted several times in the omission of substantial pages.
- The inclusion of further time dependent media in the electronic syllabus makes learning more productive and efficient in this environment. They significantly promote the understanding of the syllabus.

Keywords:

virtual learning environment, collaborative learning, constructivist pedagogy, web-.