A Prescriptive Specialized Learning Management System for Academic Feedback towards Improved Learning

Abstract

The dynamic nature of technological advances is causing changes in many fields and especially in tertiary education. Student numbers are increasing annually and institutions need to maintain education quality whilst ensuring student retention. A specialized learning management system (SLMS) was developed in this study that provides students with comprehensive feedback which will enable them to better manage their academic performance. It will also assist institutions/lecturers in identifying at-risk students early in a semester to facilitate retention. The system uses a prescriptive analytics engine implemented by means of mathematical modelling techniques together with an algorithmic approach to process academic student data in realtime. Feedback is delivered timely and is comprehensive in the sense that it presents students with individualized instructions towards improvement in a module. The system was implemented in a field test and evaluated according to validation criteria established from a literature study on related research efforts. A survey was conducted to measure user response in terms of the identified factors. The results showed that the SLMS conforms to the attributes essential to an action-recommender system and was favorably accepted by the target users.

A Framework for Computerized Progress Feedback in Tertiary Education

“…LMSs are widely used for communication between a lecturer and students in tertiary education environments but generally lack specific integration of academic feedback to students (Stantchev et al, 2014). A Specialized Learning Management System (SLMS) is ideal for providing feedback to students as it allows a lecturer to use it for data capturing and access to progress profile information (Van der Merwe et al, 2018b). This will enable a lecturer to identify at-risk students and implement timely interventions to assist them.…”

“…The inspiration for this study was founded in the observation that the quality of student learning on tertiary level in South Africa is weakening, although the resulting enrolment numbers are escalating annually. This paper represents the culmination of a series of studies in which: Mathematical models were utilized, validated and evaluated as a learning analytics tool to rank students according to academic performance (Van der Merwe et al, 2016a;2016b); the tool was implemented into an academic feedback system for timely progress reports (Van der Merwe et al, 2017b); the feedback system was optimized and expanded to include a dynamic academic improvement calculator for individual students (Van der Merwe et al, 2018a); and the optimized feedback system was implemented in a specialized learning management system for validation and evaluation (Van der Merwe et al, 2018b). The aim of this study is to develop a modelbased academic progress feedback framework for wide scale implementation to improve student retention rates at universities.…”