Sustainability, Vol. 12, Pages 706: A Predictive System Informed by Students` Similar Behaviour (Sustainability)

It is quite complex to adapt instruction to student needs in view of online education owing to the ensuing communication disconnection in such learning environments. Decision support schemes offer assistance by automatically gathering students’ data and forwarding them to the tutor in the appropriate perspective, in order to predict their behaviour and implement some action beforehand to avert or promote the final upshot. This study shows of a decision support scheme known as u-Tutor that is centred on the similarity computation between learners in the past, and how it was used in a real-case scenario. For this case study, this tool has been utilized by two real courses comprising of 392 learners alongside academic faculty, as of 2015 to 2019. The analysis offered focuses on 3 research areas: (1) perceived usefulness, (2) usability of the tool and (3) success rate of classification. From the acquired data, it can be seen that the teaching group managed to offer excellent approximations for those learners who eventually managed to pass the course, whereas u-Tutor seemed to be an early warning for learners at risk, indicating its capacity as a tutors’ supportive tool.