Ricerc@Sapienza

According to a recent EU report, about 60% of enterprises requiring ICT specialists report hard-to-fill vacancies. It is estimated that the ICT labour market will experience a shortage of millions of ICT specialists in the next few years. Published data further reveal that two factors mainly cause this shortage: i) an insufficient number of students enrolled in ICT disciplines (a problem worsened by a gender gap); ii) high dropout rate with respect to other disciplines. E-learning is one obvious response to the lack of digital skills, to extend the possibility of career advancement for workers who have not been able to access higher levels of education before entering the world of work, for less wealthy students who leave far from Universities, and students with disabilities. However, the limited efficacy of training outcomes remained unchanged and also worsened during the recent pandemic emergency, thus demanding for novel and innovative approaches. Specifically, the integration of leading-edge IT solutions (such as machine learning and artificial intelligence) may pave the way towards a new model of learning in the digital world, focusing on customisation of learning solutions to meet learner needs and capacities, combining formal and informal learning (social, collaborative and experiential) and streamlining the specific ways of achieving a positive outcome. The objective of this project is to conduct research on the design and development of new methodologies, adaptive interactive systems, tools and applications, along with innovative solutions for user modelling and learning analytics and, in general, AI-based approaches to provide personalised support in contexts such as e-learning, e-training and e-assistance. The study will rely on publicly available data (e.g., XuetangX) on student logs, and data on student e-tivities and social interactions concerning the Computer Science degree in e-learning jointly held by Sapienza and Unitelma.