Using Machine Learning to Measure Self-Efficacy Belief Through Learners' Interaction Traces in Technology-Enhanced Learning

Abstract

Self-efficacy beliefs play a critical role in learners' performance, academic choices, and, more broadly, in their future career trajectories. As Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) environments have demonstrated strong potential for supporting both performance and motivation, investigating self-efficacy within such environments is of particular interest, especially for implementing remedial practices as early as possible to support learners' self-efficacy beliefs. Our research aims to develop a system capable of detecting low self-efficacy based on learners' interaction traces while they solve exercises in a TEL system. In this paper, we present initial results and future perspectives on a detection approach based on data mining and machine learning techniques to identify features indicative of low self-efficacy beliefs. Because the detection of learners' self-efficacy beliefs through their use of TEL systems remains largely unexplored, this work is exploratory in nature. To this end, we conducted an experiment across two universities to collect interaction traces and self-reported measures of self-efficacy. We then developed a machine learning pipeline comprising multiple classification models, enabling us to highlight the importance of closely monitoring of learners' self-efficacy beliefs for improved prediction performance, given their highly dynamic nature during learning.