Research Areas IFeL

Our research activities are centred around research and development of forward-thinking applications in e-learning. Explore our fields of research.

In personalised and adaptive learning, the individual characteristics of learners are the focus of attention. Based on the analysis of variables relevant to learning, such as knowledge level, learning behaviour, interest, etc., the presentation of learning content, instruction and learning recommendations is automatically adapted. In this way, learners are offered a learning process that is tailored to their current individual needs. Our research activities deal with questions of measuring and designing learning processes and adaptive learning environments, mainly with the support of artificial intelligence methods. Psychological, mathematical, statistical or semantic models form the base for this.

Emotions play an important role in learning. Our research, therefore, focuses on the emotional and cognitive states relevant for learning, such as the joy of learning, attention or boredom. We develop methods to measure these states without disturbing the learning processes. To this end, we analyse, for example, student texts, observe the movements of the computer mouse or simply ask how the students are feeling. We integrate these measurement techniques into either online learning environments or teaching materials to support students in their learning and teachers in their teaching.

Virtual reality (VR) not only is interesting for the gaming industry but also offers a variety of opportunities for (distance) education. It allows students to learn and collaborate in immersive 3D environments with high practical relevance but without risk. We investigate the prerequisites to implement VR in distance education. We are currently focusing on conducting studies in the area of social skills training. Furthermore, we employ modern machine learning algorithms to accurately predict the student’s experience while solving a task in VR.

Learning analytics is an emerging field of research in all levels of education. In our most recent research area, we are looking at how data of online learning activities can be applied to support students, teachers or decisions in the field of quality and educational management.