Using explanations for recommender systems in learning design settings to enhance teachers’ acceptance and perceived experience

Abstract

The reuse of Learning Designs can bring significant advantages to the educational community such as the diffusion of best teaching practices and the improvement of teaching quality and learning outcomes. Although various tools, including Recommender Systems, have been developed to implement the notion of reusing Learning Designs, their adoption by teachers falls short of expectations. This paper investigates the results of providing explanations for Learning Design recommendations to teachers. To this end, we designed and implemented an explanatory mechanism incorporated into a Recommender System, which propose pre-existing Learning Designs to teachers. We then conducted a user-centric evaluation experiment. Overall, this study provides evidence that explanations should be incorporated into Recommender Systems that propose Learning Designs, as a way of improving the teacher-perceived experience and promoting their wider adoption by teachers. The more teachers accept and adopt Recommender Systems that propose Learning Designs, the more the educational community gains the benefits of reusing Learning Designs.