Guiding Learners into Reengagement through the SCALE Environment: An Empirical Study

The paper presents the facilities offered by the open learner model maintained in the web-based, adaptive, activity-oriented learning environment SCALE (Supporting Collaboration and Adaptation in a Learning Environment), in order to guide online students who become disengaged and support their reengagement. The open learner model (OLM_SCALE) contains and represents information about students´ performance level, the minimum, maximum, and average performance level calculated from all the students enrolled in the specific subject matter, and students´ interactions with the system. The paper gives an outline of the SCALE environment and OLM_SCALE and presents an empirical study that was conducted. The results of the study revealed that: 1) students positively admitted the facilities of OLM_SCALE and 2) the exploitation of OLM_SCALE can effectively lead disengaged students to work in an engaged way.