Identifying risks factors of students' failure in e-learning systems: towards a warning system

Abstract

The radical changes that 21st century has brought about in the territory of education has increased the requirements of the underlying stakeholders for smarter tools capable to provide continuous and sophisticated feedback of the educational process. Decision makers in this area need to make decisions at various points as well as at multiple levels during the life cycle of the educational process. Learning management systems (LMS) can provide decision support services which can be used to increase the learning effectiveness of the new mode of learning as well as the efficient organisation of the institutional resources. Identifying students at risk is a major problem. In this paper we provide a framework and a detailed case study for identifying risks factors of students' failure in e-learning and a proposal of how an LMS can be transformed into a warning system and provide decision support services to decision makers.