Inclusive Intelligent Learning Management System Framework - Application of Data Science in Inclusive Education

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Data Science and Advanced Analytics, specialization in Data ScienceBeing a disabled student the author faced higher education with a handicap which as experience studying during COVID 19 confinement periods matched the findings in recent research about the importance of digital accessibility through more e-learning intensive academic experiences. Narrative and systematic literature reviews enabled providing context in World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, legal and standards framework and information technology and communication state-of-the art. Assessing Portuguese higher education institutions’ web sites alerted to the fact that only outlying institutions implemented near perfect, accessibility-wise, websites. Therefore a gap was identified in how accessible the Portuguese higher education websites are, the needs of all students, including those with disabilities, and even the accessibility minimum legal requirements for digital products and the services provided by public or publicly funded organizations. Having identified a problem in society and exploring the scientific base of knowledge for context and state of the art was a first stage in the Design Science Research methodology, to which followed development and validation cycles of an Inclusive Intelligent Learning Management System Framework. The framework blends various Data Science study fields contributions with accessibility guidelines compliant interface design and content upload accessibility compliance assessment. Validation was provided by a focus group whose inputs were considered for the version presented in this dissertation. Not being the purpose of the research to deliver a complete implementation of the framework and lacking consistent data to put all the modules interacting with each other, the most relevant modules were tested with open data as proof of concept. The rigor cycle of DSR started with the inclusion of the previous thesis on Atlântica University Institute Scientific Repository and is to be completed with the publication of this thesis and the already started PhD’s findings in relevant journals and conferences

Fuzzy Linguistic Recommender Systems for the Selective Diffusion of Information in Digital Libraries

The significant advances in information and communication technologies are changing the process of how information is accessed. The internet is a very important source of information and it influences the development of other media. Furthermore, the growth of digital content is a big problem for academic digital libraries, so that similar tools can be applied in this scope to provide users with access to the information. Given the importance of this, we have reviewed and analyzed several proposals that improve the processes of disseminating information in these university digital libraries and that promote access to information of interest. These proposals manage to adapt a user’s access to information according to his or her needs and preferences. As seen in the literature one of the techniques with the best results, is the application of recommender systems. These are tools whose objective is to evaluate and filter the vast amount of digital information that is accessible online in order to help users in their processes of accessing information. In particular, we are focused on the analysis of the fuzzy linguistic recommender systems (i.e., recommender systems that use fuzzy linguistic modeling tools to manage the user’s preferences and the uncertainty of the system in a qualitative way). Thus, in this work, we analyzed some proposals based on fuzzy linguistic recommender systems to help researchers, students, and teachers access resources of interest and thus, improve and complement the services provided by academic digital libraries.TIN2016-75850-RTIN2013-40658-