Muhammad Afzaal. Photo: Åse Karlén.

On September 30, 2024, Muhammad Afzaal will present his PhD thesis at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV), Stockholm University. The title of the thesis is “Explainable AI for Data-Driven Feedback and Intelligent Action Recommendations to Support”.

PhD student: Muhammad Afzaal, DSV
Opponent: Arnold Pears, KTH
Main supervisor: Jalal Nouri, DSV
Supervisor: Panagiotis Papapetrou and Uno Fors, DSV

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The defence takes place at DSV in Kista, starting at 13:00 pm.
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Abstract

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a cognitive ability with demonstrable significance in facilitating students’ ability to effectively strategize, monitor, and assess their own learning actions. Studies have indicated that a lack of self-regulated learning skills negatively impacts students’ academic performance. Effective data-driven feedback and action recommendations are considered crucial for SRL and significantly influence student learning and performance. However, the task of delivering personalised feedback to every student poses a significant challenge for teachers. Moreover, the task of identifying appropriate learning activities and resources for individualised recommendations poses a significant challenge for teachers, given the large number of students enrolled in most courses.

To address these challenges, several studies have examined how learning analytics-based dashboards can support students’ self-regulation. These dashboards offered several visualisations (as feedback) on student success and failure. However, while such feedback may be beneficial, it does not offer insightful information or actionable recommendations to help students improve academically. Explainable artificial intelligence (xAI) approaches have been proposed to explain such feedback and generate insights from predictive models, with a focus on the relevant actions a student needs to take to improve in ongoing courses. Such intelligent activities could be offered to students as data-driven behavioural change recommendations.

This thesis offers an xAI-based approach that predicts course performance and computes informative feedback and actionable recommendations to promote student self-regulation. Unlike previous research, this thesis integrates a predictive approach with an xAI approach to analyse and manipulate students’ learning trajectories. The aim is to offer detailed, data-driven actionable feedback to students by providing in-depth insights and explanations for the predictions provided by the approach. The technique provides students with more practical and useful knowledge compared to the predictions alone.

The proposed approach was implemented in the form of a dashboard to support self-regulation by students in university courses, and it was evaluated to determine its effects on the students’ academic performance. The results revealed that the dashboard significantly enhanced students’ learning achievements and improved their self-regulated learning skills. Furthermore, it was found that the recommendations generated by the proposed approach positively affected students’ performance and assisted them in self-regulation.

Keywords

Self-regulated learning, Explainable artificial intelligence, Counterfactual explanations, Intelligent recommendations, Self-regulation, Informative feedback