Web Data Mining in Education

Abstract

Web data mining for extracting meaningful information from large amount of web data has been explored over a decade. The concepts and techniques have been borrowed into the education sector and the new research discipline of learning analytics has emerged. With the development of web technologies, it has been a common practice to design online collaborative learning activities to enhance learning. To apply learning analytics techniques to monitor the online collaborative process enables a lecturer to make instant and informed pedagogical decisions. However, it is still a challenge to build strong connection between learning analytics and learning science for understanding cognitive progression in learning. In this connection, this chapter reports a study to apply learning analytics techniques in the aspect of web usage mining and clustering analysis with underpinning Bloom's taxonomy to analyze students' performance in the online collaborative learning process. The impacts of intermediate interventions are also elaborated.