Using Big Data Analytics to Improve Distance-Learning Services.

Abstract

Distance learning is acquiring too much attention today due to the Covid-19 pandemic situation where students are unable to attend schools or universities. In this situation, having a general distance-learning platform will not do any good. Previously, several research works were conducted where it was believed that adding big data to distance learning platform could increase its performance. However, no solid proof or lack of evidence questions the use of big data in distance learning. To eliminate this research gap, this research study collected information by conducting interviews with four professors from four different universities in Saudi Arabia. From their responses, it was found that adding big data in distance learning is helping those universities to create more personalized content, increasing numbers of students for distance learning courses, analyzing which students would fail and tracking their performance constraints. Overall, implementing big data is helping those universities to increase the efficacy of distance learning courses. Some issues are also identified such as the presence of outdated technologies and long training sessions to become accustomed to the system.