Introduction
With the advance of information and communication technologies, e-learning has spread like a new modern educational paradigm.
One problem in the e-learning scenario is defining a useful method to evaluate an e-learning course. In effect, compared to the traditional teaching systems, in e-learning systems there are other aspects related to the use of technology and multimedia systems. An e-learning approach becomes sustainable when the use of computers in particular, and ICT in general, it can provide real added value to teaching, added value that could not be achieved with traditional tools and approaches. One of the major problem of distance learning compared to traditional training is the apparent lack of teacher who becomes a matter to be assessed for the effectiveness of e-learning systems.
The evaluation of education systems can be seen as a process in which one tries to indicate whether the learning experiences with educational software are effective [], where authors affirm that e-learning is good if it provides the right people with the right skills at a reasonable cost in a timely manner.
It is possible to evaluate an e-learning course using the traditional approach based on information systems evaluation and other systems (e.g., questionnaires or tests). This approach, very useful to evaluate a business process in a company, may not to be sufficient in the e-learning field. With the advent of web 2.0 people express their opinion using typical web 2.0 tools, such as social networks and wiki. In [] a survey and an analysis of the use of social software in education is proposed. The paper summarizes the characteristics and the existing problems of the educational application of various social software: the authors identify 438 articles as samples of the content analysis (Chine Journal FullText Database 20032008), which use blogs (335 items), wikis (51), social software (21), podcasts (20), and instant messaging (11) in education. Application areas include matters of most concern in teaching and professional development of the teacher, then knowledge management, web-based learning and other fields.
It is clear that a simple evaluation of e-learning courses using a traditional approach is not enough and the necessity to use data collected from the social tools (blog, wiki and so on) should be explored. In order to develop a systematic approach to the use of data derived from social software for e-learning evaluation, it is appropriate to adopt the Critical Success Factor (CSF) /Key Performance Indicator (KPI) analysis and apply it to this new source of data.
In this paper, we deepen the work described in [] in which the authors describe a first step towards the evaluation of e-learning projects based on the learners discussions on social web pages.
Our idea is based on the identification of the CSFs and the KPIs in an education course scenario of synchronous e-learning. We define the social metrics for measuring the KPIs assessed with this social approach.
The use of a social approach is important as it allows us to capture the real perception that the student has with respect to an e-learning course: through a blog the student expresses his or her thoughts spontaneously. Spontaneity is difficult to catch with the classical methods. For example, the questionnaires are one way of gathering information from an e-learning system, but there are some problems with their usage, such as reluctance to answer questions, as well as guessing and the answer being time consuming.
In this paper we propose also an idea to automatically measure the defined KPIs through the analysis of the information extracted from the learners opinions posted on some social web pages related to an e-learning course. To this end, it is possible to use the software platform, the architecture of which is described in [], after an upgrade and a customization of the platform itself for the e-learning scenario. This software platform has already been used, with remarkable results, in different agrifood contexts (e.g., wine, olive oil). For the purpose of this work, the KPI evaluation is facilitated by a new introduced feature of the software platform that is, the ability to identify any positive, negative or neutral level of sentiment expressed by the learners in their discussions.
Section , we draw some conclusions and discuss future work.
Related Work
The works discussed in this paper are related to three main aspects analysed for this paper: the study of Critical Success Factors in the e-learning systems; the study of Key Performance Indicators in the e-learning systems and the study of Sentiment Analysis, which is a very important aspect to understand the students perception.
Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in e-Learning Systems.
The concept of CSFs was defined in []. It is possible to apply the idea of CSFs to the e-learning area.
In our previous work [] we have widely described the concept of CSFs in e-learning systems. Since that work, we have further investigated CSFs in e-learning, looking to the more recent literature, with the aim to identify CSFs for the evaluation of e-learning systems and the KPIs to measure such factors.
In [], the authors show that online courses are defined as having at least 80 % of the course content delivered online, typically with little or no face-to-face learning (e.g., course management system (CMS), video conferences).
In [] are summarized the four key factors affecting the successful creation of an e-learning model for higher education: (1) human deliberation, which could be considered as the processes undertaken by people which referred as people; (2) instructional design, which is the practice of maximizing the effectiveness, efficiency and appeal of instruction and other learning experiences; (3) development of technology; (4) social delivery, which includes some items for measuring the success of e-learning, such as student participation, course content, course structure, financial support, cultural support, learning content and language support.
