Evaluation - Advances in Personalized Web-Based Education - page 91

Chapter 4
Evaluation

Abstract In this chapter the evaluation of the hybrid student model F.O.S., which
incorporates fuzzy logic techniques, is presented. The presented evaluation pro-
cess is performed applying the evaluation framework PERSIVA (Chrysafiadi and
Virvou 2013a), which includes both questionnaires and observations through
experiments. In particular, either the educational impact (i.e. performance, satis-
faction, change of learners' attitudes) or the effectiveness and validity adaptation
of the personalized and/or adaptive tutoring system are assessed. The evaluated
hybrid student model was integrated in a programming tutoring system for the
programming language 'C'. Students of a postgraduate program in the field of
Informatics on the University of Piraeus, Greece, used the particular system to
learn how to program with the programming language 'C'. The evaluation results
were very encouraging. They demonstrated that the presented student modeling
approach had a positive impact on the learners' performance and on the learning
process. Furthermore, they showed that the system made valid and meaningful
adaptation decisions.

4.1 Introduction

The past decades the interest on web-based learning environments and tools has
been witnessed a rapid growth. The lack of time and place limitations and the
ability of web-based educational systems to offer instructions to large and hetero-
geneous groups of learners play a major role in the rapid growth of this interest.
However, web-based educational systems and computer tutors have to react and make
decisions like human tutors, in order to offer as effective learning as a real-life
classroom educational process. A solution to this is the technology of Intelligent
Tutoring Systems (ITSs), which are computer-based tutors that aim to provide the
same level of student specific help as a human tutor (Mitrovic et al. 2007), making
learning process more adaptive and student oriented (Jarusek and Pelánek 2012).
A core component in any intelligent or adaptive tutoring system that represents
many of the student's features, such as knowledge and individual traits, is the