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Abstract: Recovery and resilience plan (RRP) approved by the European Commission fosters the development of lifelong learning programs to upgrade employees’ skills and knowledge for digital and green transitions. Within higher education, the field of information and communication technology (ICT) is also a priority area, so we compared the demographic variables of students enrolled in formal first-cycle higher education programs in ICT with those enrolled in lifelong ICT programs within the framework of the Advanced Computer Skills project funded by the RRP in Slovenia. The results show that formal firstcycle higher education in the field of ICT remains strongly male-dominated, whereas, among participants in lifelong learning, the percentage of females stands out. Bachelor programs in ICT are primarily enrolled by young people aged up to 24 years, while shorter universitybased lifelong learning programs attract mostly older participants with higher completed formal education and from a broader range of prior educational backgrounds. Finally, when all three variables (gender, age and level of prior formal education) are considered, participants in lifelong learning are much more similar to part-time students than full-time bachelor ICT students, although the percentage of men in formal education is still predominant even in part-time studies. The research findings highlight the need for further efforts to offer lifelong learning in ICT to enable individuals to improve their employment prospects, progress in the workplace or even change their field of work.
Keywords: higher education, ICT education, lifelong learning, gender divide, age differences, prior education, formal education
Published in ReVIS: 11.02.2025; Views: 342; Downloads: 2
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Abstract: Higher education institutions (HEIs) are often curious whether students will be successful or not during their study. Before or during their courses the academic institutions try to estimate the percentage of successful students. But is it possible to predict the success rate of students enrolled in their courses? Are there any specific student characteristics, which can be associated with the student success rate? Is there any relevant student data available to HEIs on the basis of which they could predict the student success rate? The answers to the above research questions can generally be obtained using data mining tools. Unfortunately, data mining algorithms work best with large data sets, while student data, available to HEIs, related to courses are limited and falls into the category of small data sets. Thus, the study focuses on data mining for small student data sets and aims to answer the above research questions by comparing two different data mining tools. The conclusions of this study are very promising and will encourage HEIs to incorporate data mining tools as an important part of their higher education knowledge management systems.
Keywords: data mining, knowledge management system, student's success rate, data mining for small data set, higher education institutions, educational data mining
Published in ReVIS: 19.02.2016; Views: 8864; Downloads: 329  (1 vote)
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