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April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

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Figure 7. The detailed results for Cluster 8<br />

Another example can be seen at Figure 8 where the results for Cluster 9 are presented. The students of this cluster<br />

have in common mainly the theory (CourseID=48) of course “Analysis and Design of Algorithms” and its related lab<br />

course (CourseID=49) that are taught in the third semester. The MCL managed to isolate these students from the<br />

total of 1199 students.<br />

Discussion and conclusion<br />

Figure 8. The detailed results for Cluster 9<br />

We propose a methodology to improve the content quality of LMS courses with the application of new metrics and<br />

existing clustering algorithms such as SimpleKmeans and MCL. We show that the proposed metrics can offer a<br />

preliminary course ranking, which in turn can be used as input for clustering algorithms. These suggest specific<br />

actions to instructors so that they can improve their course content, course usability and help them adapt their courses<br />

to student capabilities. Furthermore, we show that the MCL algorithm can successfully group together students who<br />

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