The project ‘Technologies of dynamic modelling of students and digital assistants for the improvement of results in e-learning platforms’ WITH_YOU (2022-2025), led by Editores y Consultores Especializados (ECE), and in which also participate the Universidad Europea del Atlántico (UNEATLANTICO) and the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (UPC), held last 22nd of October a follow-up meeting of the project in the facilities of UNEATLANTICO in Santander.
During the meetings, the completed deliverables and the pending tasks until the end of the project were reviewed. At present, work is being carried out to develop the final prototype of the project, which will include students, managers and teaching staff in the pilot phase.
Regarding the analysis of the data collected from the students, in order to create groupings of similar characteristics, the team is trying to balance the pre-filtering of the information in order to finally carry out the process of classifying students. In this data processing module using artificial intelligence (AI), the ‘explainability’ of the model is of great importance. The partners try to build a neural network that provides ‘explainable’ results and not ‘Blackbox’ results, the latter being algorithms that, lacking transparency or interpretability, do not allow us to understand why an AI system reaches certain conclusions or predictions.
Regarding the social profile analysis module, with the aim of classifying students according to their probability of dropping out, we started with the programming of a Simulated Annealing algorithm, due to its computational power in complex combinatorial problems. The current results thanks to this algorithm make it possible to give each student an indicator related to their probability of dropping out, so that the algorithm can select small groups of students among which there will be 80% of dropouts, 50% of dropouts, etc. The higher the desired precision, the larger the sample size to be taken.
Finally, the partners focused on the development of the intervention systems and the design of the overall prototype. For this, they discussed the automated actions that can be useful for each of the learner profiles, and in particular for those who require special interest (at risk of dropping out) and also for others whose experience on the learning platform can be improved. Experts in online education and psychology will be involved in this task. In addition, a preliminary design of what this innovative prototype will look like, combining the technologies developed by the participants, was shown. This new system is expected to be available in early 2025.
Where is the project being disseminated?
The WITH_YOU project, through the European University of the Atlantic (UNEATLANTICO) recently participated in the International Fairs of Postgraduate Studies (FIEP) in Peru and Ecuador, specifically in the cities of Lima, Guayaquil and Quito, to show the attendees the importance of this type of initiatives in online learning.
FIEP 2024 brought together numerous graduate schools and universities, offering attendees the opportunity to interact personally with representatives from various institutions in one place and on a single day.
The company Editores y Consultores Especializados (ECE) is leading the project, with the participation of the Universidad Europea del Atlántico (UNEATLANTICO) and the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (UPC).
The initiative is framed within the State Research Plan 2021-2023 within the call for Public-Private Collaboration Projects 2021.
The publication is part of the project CPP2021-008349, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union-NextGenerationEU/PRTR”.