LEARNING PATTERN DISCOVERY: IMPACT OF USER-CENTRIC DESIGN APPROACH TOWARDS ENHANCEMENT OF E-LEARNING SYSTEMS.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a system for automated learning directed towards discovering and enhancement of the set of recurrent behaviours that can be found within a learning knowledge base and how they can be modelled to enable a more effective reasoning and tactical strategies for personalized adaptation and decision making. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper introduces a methodology that makes use of information readily available within a learning process to explore and analyse the data to obtain inference knowledge capable of enhancing individual learning performance. The author valuated this approach through a user-centric design prototype and a model developed using Business Process Model Notations to corroborate the focus on improving performance of e-learning systems. Findings: The technological response to satisfying the increasing demand for richer and more precise depiction of e-learning applications capable of providing platforms for pattern exploration where users can browse for knowledge they might consider as interesting is by providing a personalized adaptive learning system for the users. Adoption of such technological developments will spark a great success for many learners and needed to provide continuous intelligent recommendation, guidance and feedbacks on learner's performance especially in achieving the overall learning objective. Research limitations/implications: To meet the overall needs of intended users, there is requirement for e-learning systems to embody technologies that support learners in achieving their learning goals and this process do not happen automatically. Such process should take into account the fact that there is an additional task of matching these persons (user profiling) with solutions that best fits their particular learning needs (personalization). Practical implications: The work in this paper considers the implication of the user centered design approach, and to this end, identify some of the common design problems with e-learning systems as means to revealing the implications for designers to stick to user-centric standards when developing automated learning systems in order to ensure learners satisfaction and reliability. Originality/value: The approach and prototype described in this paper provides an enhanced model for learning which is useful towards the development of e-learning systems that are more intelligent, predictive and robotically adaptive, which also aid in discovery of new learning patterns and enhancement of existing learning processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]