The Evaluation of Learning Web Sites through Web Usage Mining
Karin BECKER, Professor, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Karin BECKER was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1964. She received a Data Processing Technologist degree and the M.Sc. degree on Computer Science from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 1984 and 1989, respectively, and received a PhD. Degree from the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Belgium, in 1987. She is currently a Professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Her research interests include databases, knowledge discovery in databases and web mining, reuse techniques, and component-based development.

becker@inf.pucrs.br

Abstract

Web Mining is the research area that investigates the use of Data Mining techniques over Web data. Web Usage Mining (WUM) focus on the interaction behavior between web users and requested Web pages in order to identify navigation patterns. This paper focus on a process framework for developing WUM application in the domain of web-based distance education, which takes into account criteria and abstractions proper to the distance education domain. The process framework is oriented towards learning activities and students' actions over technological resources available at the learning site. The paper illustrates this process through a real case study developed at the distance education department of a large Brazilian university.