Adaptive evaluation for barriers elimination: The OpenEDR4C platform

Abstract

The demands of contemporary work and education environments, embodied in Industry and Education 4.0 paradigms, have caused special attention to reducing the digital and educational gap among marginalized students and lifelong learners. Adaptive learning has become a relevant strategy to increase student engagement as it fosters better inclusion, equity, and learning outcome results. Sustainable Development Goal No. 4, Quality of Education, will be reached when every resource, platform, and program can be accessed by individuals regardless of their background, abilities, or capacities in every moment of their lives. The OpenEDR4C is a digital platform created to offer open educational resources (OERs) to scale up the Complex Thinking mega-competence through social, scientific, and technological entrepreneurship training. The platform is also designed to eliminate barriers in five dimensions across the learning path offered by each student according to a self-declared profile. The framework sets a differentiated pathway for the learning experience built with a decision tree and diverse multichannel educational resources. The pilot implementation of the platform allowed the final development stage to validate the functional platform launch. The findings of this study are a helpful contribution to digital education environment design and conceptualization, as they offer (1) a tool for inclusive and accessible platform conceptualization, (2) a profiling strategy framework for adaptive learning paths, and (3) the identification of classes or groups of users based on their needs and characteristics to offer the corresponding content.