Mapping metric between meaningful learning characteristics and moodle activities

Learner engagement in e-learning is one of the five important success components of e-learning. Many studies evaluated the effectiveness of e-learning in terms of learner engagement. Engaging learners in meaningful learning (ML) is the main goal of the learning process at every level. This study analyses the relationship between ML and Moodle activities. It presents a metric for mapping between ML characteristics and Moodle activities. The mapping process consists of four steps: (1) selecting the key facts for each meaningful learning characteristic (MLC); (2) selecting the key facts for each Moodle activities; (3) calculating the relationship score between MLC and Moodle activities by calculating semantic similarity; and (4) validating mapping results. The evaluation using the Wilcoxon test proved that there was no significant difference between the proposed mapping metric and the experts’ judgment. The result also showed that the relationship score ranging between 0.400 and 0.890 (0.667 in average)indicated that each action within Moodle activities contributes to the level of learner engagement on each MLC.