Contextualised Student Modelling for Enculturated Systems

Contextual student modeling, also called cultural profiling or cultural modeling, refers to the process of building a computational representation of the cultural identity and background of a student. Previous works have been done that identify and use certain environmental dimensions for such a model. In this paper, a new approach is proposed that uses additional dimensions, and incorporates combinations of dimension clusters to represent and quantify a student’s expression of socio-cultural group traits and preferences. The viability of this approach is demonstrated through the use of a prototype that collects dimension data and generates estimates of a student’s association with particular socio-cultural groups in five categories. An evaluation of the prototype revealed that estimates were rated as reasonable and acceptable by students and confirms that the approach extends current efforts in the field of culturallyaware tutoring systems for modeling student’s cultural context.