Monitoring Academic Performance Based on Learning Analytics and Ontology: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic literature review of the coordinated use of Learning Analytics and Computational Ontologies to support educators in the process of academic performance evaluation of students. The aim is to provide a general overview for researchers about the current state of this relationship between Learning Analytics and Ontologies, and how they have been applied in a coordinated way. We selected 31 of a total of 1230 studies related to the research questions. The retrieved studies were analyzed from two perspectives: first, we analyzed the approaches where researchers used Learning Analytics and Ontologies in a coordinated way to describe some Taxonomy of Educational Objectives; In the second perspective, we seek to identify which models or methods have been used as an analytical tool for educational data. The results of this review suggest that: 1) few studies consider that student interactions in the Learning Management System can represent students’ learning experiences; 2) most studies use ontologies in the context of learning object assessment to enable learning sequencing; 3) we did not identify methods of evaluation of academic performance guided by Taxonomies of Educational Objectives; and 4) no studies were identified that report the coordinated use of Learning Analytics and Computational Ontologies, in the context of academic performance monitoring. Thus, we identify future directions of research such as the proposal of a new model of evaluation of academic performance.

Keywords

• distance education and online learning
• educational objectives
• learning analytics
• ontology