Abstract:

E-learning educational content quality and/or quantity affects in a straightforward manner course usage. In this study, a novel architectural framework is presented and put to test. This framework utilizes some already tested and new measures and metrics. These measures and metrics contribute to the assessment of both educational content exposed by the educators and content usage by the learners.
Both metrics and measures were put to test in an experimental case scenario that took place in a Greek university e-Learning platform. Following authors’ proposed architectural design, metrics and measures calculations were performed both online and offline. Preliminary evaluation of the results has shown that the proposed system managed to track both educational content and course usage successfully.
The findings of this first-time system experimentation are also worthwhile. There is evidence that the frequently updated or increased, in terms of content size educational material may potentially increase course usage results. However, regarding the educational content and determined by metric thresholds, course quantity and quality levels need to be upheld in order to achieve increased course usage results. Such threshold values depend on factors such as course and users' profile, the monitoring time period etc.

Keywords:

Education, e-learning, metrics and measures, course content, usage assessment, performance analysis.