An Integrated Mathematical Programming Approach and Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Optimizing Learning Elements in E-Learning Based Educational Systems

The increasing use of an internet improved internet technologies as well as web-based applications. Also, increasing effectiveness of the e-Learning has become one of the most practically and theoretically important issues in both educational engineering and information system fields. The online training environment enables learners to undertake customized training at any time and any place. Therefore the costs and benefits in implementation is of significance. There is a competence set consisting of ideas, knowledge, information, and skills for solving a decision problem. In order to effectively acquire the needed skills in the competence set to solve the problem, finding appropriate learning sequences of the needed skills for decision makers should be taken into account. This paper concerns with identification of varied cost elements in e-learning educational system and optimization by the means of mathematical programming. Then an effective method to estimate the learning cost between any two skills by using the grey relational analysis and a radial basis function network is proposed. Keywords—E-learning systems; Mathematical programming; Grey relational analysis (GRA); Learning sequences; Radial basis function network (RBFN)