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Smart adaptive learning based on Moodle platform

Conference Paper · April 2018

DOI: 10.1145/3175628.3175635

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 Smart Adaptive Learning Based on Moodle Platform
Fatima Ezzahraa LOUHAB Ayoub BAHNASSE Mohamed TALEA
LTI Laboratory, Faculty of Science LTI Laboratory, Faculty of Science LTI Laboratory, Faculty of Science
Ben M’sik, Hassan II University Ben M’sik, Hassan II University Ben M’sik, Hassan II University
7599 Casablanca, Morocco 7599 Casablanca, Morocco 7599 Casablanca, Morocco
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT In these systems, students can access course content in

With the increased needs of learners and teachers to have remote different formats (text, image, sound), interact with teachers and
access to learning content, the use of course management tools / or colleagues through forums, chats, videoconferences or other
become crucial. Today, with the development of technology types of communication tools [4]. These platforms provide a set
many course management systems have appeared. These systems of configurable features to enable the creation of online courses,
include Moodle which represents the Platform the most used by topic pages, workgroups, and learning communities [5]. In
learners. The weak point of this Platform is the lack of a
addition to these features these systems also offer an evaluation
customized mechanisms to control the learning process of the
learner. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to propose an approach mechanisms.
that can be integrated with Moodle in order to allow learners to The LMS as shown in Fig. 1, is the E-Learning platform that
access to a personalized content according to their level and also is regarded as the most important part of E-Learning solutions
allow teachers to effectively control the learning process of their from the academic view [6].
learners. To validate this approach, we propose the SALCM
plugin which will be integrated with Moodle as a new module.

KEYWORDS
Smart Learning, Moodle, Adaptive Learning. LMS

1 INTRODUCTION E-learning
Today, with the development of Information and
Communication Technologies, we cannot but speak about the
new methodologies of learning and especially distance learning
or Electronic learning. E-learning is an interactive learning in
which learning content is available online and provides Figure 1: LMS in E-learning.
automatic feedback to the learning activities of the learner [1].
E-learning can cover a range of applications, systems and
There are several types of LMS solutions, some of them are
processes, such as web-based learning and computer-aided
commercial solutions and others are open source such as the
learning [2].
Moodle platform that is the basis of our contribution.
There are different expressions used to describe computer
The aim of this article is to present a solution based on
applications for learning, such as e-learning systems, the
Moodle which allows teachers to control the learning process of
Learning Management Systems (LMS), the Course Management
the learners, while ensuring that the latter has an adaptive access
Systems (CMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) [3].
to the course content.
In this article, we will present a description of the Moodle
platform by justifying this choice. Then, we will describe the
related works containing solutions based on Moodle and the
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or positioning of our contribution. Later, we will detail the idea of
distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and our proposed approach. And finally, we conclude with a
the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by
others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy
conclusion.
otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

SCAMS '17, October 25–27, 2017, Tangier, Morocco © 2017

2 MOODLE
Association for Computing Machinery.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5211-6/17/10…$15.00 2.1 Definition
https://doi.org/10.1145/3175628.3175635
Moodle is a course management system for e-learning. The
acronym MOODLE stands for Modular Object-Oriented
Dynamic Learning Environment. It has already become a term of
its own synonym with a software package designed to help
instructors to create and add quality instructions online [7].
The Moodle goal is to provide a set of tools that support an
approach based on research and discovery of e-learning. It allows
SCAMS '17, October 25–27, 2017, Tangier, Morocco FE.LOUHAB et al.

teachers to provide and share documents, homework, quizzes, 2.2 Comparative study
etc. with the students by an easy way to learn, and also create
This study consists of comparing the different LMS solutions
quality online courses [8]. existing today. We were interested in Open Source solutions.
Moodle is a free open source project, which means that users The table 1 summarizes the different criteria on which we are
are free to download, use, modify and even distribute it under the based to make our choice. The Score five is the maximum score
terms of the GNU [9]. To work, it must be installed on a Web for each criterion.
server somewhere, either on a computer or on a web hosting
server.

Table 1: Comparative study of LMSs

Design and
Pedagogy Technical
ergonomics

Customizing the user interface

Modularity of the platform

Language Management
Creating assessments
Course Management
LCMS / Author tool

Media Management
Range management

Nomadic dimension
Collaborative mode

Responsive Design
User Management
Individualization

Gamification
Interfacing
Exchanges

Browsers
Glossary
Users
LMS

Canvas 12 Y 5 1 1 4 5 4 N NA 4 5 3 2 2 Y N 3 1
(2011) [10] M
Chamilo 0.7 Y 5 5 1 5 4 5 Y 4 4 5 3 2 2 Y Y 5 1
(2010) [11] M
Dokeos 1 Y 5 1 1 5 4 5 Y NA 4 5 1 2 1 Y N 5 1
(2004) [12] M
ILIAS 180 Y 5 5 2 5 4 5 Y NA 5 5 4 5 NA Y Y 5 1
(2010) [13]
Moodle >40 Y 5 2 4 5 4 5 Y 5 4 5 5 5 4 Y Y 5 2
(2001) [14] M
Open Olat 700 Y 5 2 2 5 5 5 N NA 2 5 1 4 NA Y N 5 1
(2011) [15] 00

learners. Such as, the domination of teachers on the learning

Based on this study and calculating the sum of each LMS scores, activity, the learning materials and the use of a unique mode of
we can notice on the one hand that the Moodle platform comes learning are boring. The work of [17] proposes the use of the
first. On the other hand, the number of Moodle users is much Moodle platform in order to improve students' English language
higher compared to other LMS solutions. As a result, we decided skills by creating a new learning environment on which learners
to use the Moodle platform as the environment for our can build knowledge using the modules offered by Moodle.
contribution. According to [18] the mix of online assessment and
evaluation face to face can give much better results. Taking the
example of understanding the microeconomic concept, he
3 RELATED WORKS proposed a mixed ELFF (E-learning and Face to Face)
Accessibility of learning tools remains a problem in society. methodology. This methodology consists in using an online
Especially when the learner’s needs are taken into consideration. evaluation system in the form of a multi-choice questionnaire on
In this sense [16] proposes a Plug-in which will be integrated the Moodle platform, in addition to the traditional evaluations
with the Moodle platform, where the accessible learning objects carried out in the classroom.
are a part of the online training courses, in order to improve the The work of [19] says that online assessment, using Learning
learning level and the evaluation quality. Teachers can add Management Systems (LMS) and specifically Moodle, has
tailored course content for learners.
advantages over traditional assessment in terms of correction and
Technology remains an important tool in learning English,
supervision. He showed that the integration of Wiris software
especially when it comes to listening activities. However,
[20] with Moodle was beneficial in terms of presentation to the
traditional methods of learning limit the improvement of the
learners of the different questionnaires with the same difficulty
degrees.

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Smart Adaptive Learning Based on Moodle Platform SCAMS '17, October 25–27, 2017, Tangier, Morocco

Similarly, this research work [21] present the importance of

using the Moodle platform and the Wiris editor for designing
learning tools for teachers and learners. The proposed solution
allows teachers to create the courses and the various tests, which
will be corrected automatically without the intervention of the
teacher who has already defined the correction mode. The tests
and thanks to Wiris will be different for each learner.

4 POSITIONING OF OUR CONTRIBUTION

The problem of the adaptation and the control of the learning
processes represents always a constraint in the Learning
Management Systems either for the instructors or the learners.
According to our research and based on the work cited in the
previous section, it is noted that there is no work that has
proposed a mechanism for controlling the learning process of
learners and giving this latter an adaptive learning content.
Our SALCM (Smart Adaptive Learning Control Module)
approach is to provide teachers with an integrated solution with
Moodle that allows them to control the learning process for
learners. As well as allowing this latter to access to the course
content suited to their levels. And this by developing and adding
a new plugin to the Moodle platform that ensures the
functionalities of our approach.

5 SALCM APPROACH

5.1 Course architecture

As already mentioned, the Moodle platform allows teachers and
instructors to add the desired course content for learners. In our
approach the courses are set up according to the model shown in
Fig. 2:

Figure 3: Activity diagram.

The above model presents the three actors in our solution,

namely the learner, the instructor and the system (Controller).
The instructor role is to add a course on the platform while
preparing a positioning test or a preliminary examination for the
learner with thresholds (Fig. 4):

Figure 2: Course Content Architecture.

• A course consists of several chapters.

• A chapter is divided into several sections and may
contain activities.
• A section can be presented as pages.
• A page contains, of course, a set of paragraphs.

This course content organization will then help us in

estimating the durations required for reading each chapter.

5.2 SALCM solution modelling

This diagram (Fig. 3) shows the learning process of learners
according to our approach:

Figure 4: Chapter to threshold MAP.

3
SCAMS '17, October 25–27, 2017, Tangier, Morocco FE.LOUHAB et al.

First, we define the threshold names and the associated scores examination, the instructor must define thresholds for the
(Bloc 1), This bloc is fed after a treatment between the two blocks questionnaires:
Bloc 2 and Bloc 3. The Bloc 2 is responsible for defining the
threshold names and the scores for each threshold. This
Table 3: Default thresholds for the questionnaire
association may be intrinsic (Table 2) or dynamic. The
administrator can create multiple thresholds and perform the
association according to his criteria differently from the intrinsic Threshold Value
parameters (Bloc 3). Case 1 0% < Score < 50 %
Case 2 50 % < Score < 75 %
Table 2: Thresholds for Preliminary Examination Case 3 Score > 75 %

Threshold Value According to the questionnaire score and the thresholds

defined by the instructor (Table 3), the system makes the
Beginner < Recommended score following decisions:
• Case 1: If the result of the questionnaire is less than
Intermediate < (Recommended score x 0.75) + 50% the system obliges the learner to re-read the
Recommended score. chapter and retake the questionnaire in order to have a
score that allows him to go to the next chapter.
Pre-Advanced > (Recommended score x 0.75) +
• Case 2: If the result is between 50% and 75% the
Recommended score.
learner will face two choices, either go to the next
chapter or retake the questionnaire to improve his grade.
Advanced = 100% • Case 3: If the result is more than 75% the learner will
have access to go directly to the next chapter.
The questionnaires differ from one learner to another while
The recommended score represents the normal score set by
keeping the same degree of difficulty.
the instructor.
The system, according to these thresholds (Bloc 1) decides
with which chapter the learner must start his course (Bloc 4). The 6 CONCLUSION
instructor manually sets the difficulty level of each chapter
The aim of this article was to propose a solution for the
during the course creation phase (Fig. 5). The Bloc 5 compares
integration of adaptability in course management systems
the score obtained since the preliminary examination with the
specifically for the Moodle Platform. This solution is in the form
appropriate chapter level, and automatically and dynamically of a new module developed to be integrated with Moodle.
decides the beginning chapter. The instructor can manually SALCM allows learners to have a learning process adapted
specify the chapter to be assigned for a learner (Bloc 6). according to their levels and provides an opportunity for teachers
to control this process.
Currently, we are in the implementation phase of this
solution. In addition, we are working on the proposal of an
adaptive evaluation approach in order to integrate it into Moodle.

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