In the European academic systems, the public funding to single universities depends on many factors, which are periodically evaluated. One of such factors is the rate of success, that is, the rate of students that do complete their course of study. At many levels, therefore, there is an increasing interest in being able to predict the risk that a…

One of the reported methods of cheating in online environments in the literature is CAMEO (Copying Answers using Multiple Existences Online), where harvesting accounts are used to obtain correct answers that are later submitted in the master account which gives the student credit to obtain a certificate. In previous research, we developed an…

Early warning systems have been progressively implemented in higher education institutions to predict student performance. However, they usually fail at effectively integrating the many information sources available at universities to make more accurate and timely predictions, they often lack decision-making reasoning to motivate the reasons…

Comprehension is an important cognitive state for learning. Human tutors recognize comprehension and non-comprehension states by interpreting learner non-verbal behavior (NVB). Experienced tutors adapt pedagogy, materials, and instruction to provide additional learning scaffold in the context of perceived learner comprehension. Near real-time…

Students' informal conversations on social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) shed light into their educational experiences--opinions, feelings, and concerns about the learning process. Data from such uninstrumented environments can provide valuable knowledge to inform student learning. Analyzing such data, however, can be challenging. The complexity…

Writing an essay is a very important skill for students to master, but a difficult task for them to overcome. It is particularly true for English as Second Language (ESL) students in China. It would be very useful if students could receive timely and effective feedback about their writing. Automatic essay feedback generation is a challenging task,…

In the current time of globalization, collaboration among people in virtual environments is becoming an important precondition of success. This trend is reflected also in the educational domain where students collaborate in various short-term groups created repetitively but changing in each round (e.g. in MOOCs). Students in these kind of dynamic…

Microblogging is a popular technology in social networking applications that lets users publish online short text messages (e.g., less than 200 characters) in real time via the web, SMS, instant messaging clients, etc. Microblogging can be an effective tool in the classroom and has lately gained notable interest from the education community. This…