Building Explainable Recommender System for Engineering Students Work-Integrated Learning (WIL)

Woorin Hwang, Hongming Li, Anna Pauline Aguinalde, Yilin Zhang, Jinnie Shin, Kent Crippen, Bruce Carroll

Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2025), pp. 549–553 · 2025

Conference paper

Abstract

Work-integrated learning (WIL) is essential in engineering education, bridging the gap between theory and practice while enhancing students' employability. This study presents an LLM-enhanced, AI-driven hybrid content-based recommender system designed to optimize WIL experiences by tailoring recommendations based on students' academic and personal backgrounds, as well as the WIL tasks. A sample of 223 undergraduate engineering students participated, providing insights into their WIL experiences. Preliminary results show the internal performance of the recommender system with promising accuracy, and the system is further evaluated to understand its explainability and relevance.

Materials

Cite

APA

Hwang, W., Li, H., Aguinalde, A. P., Zhang, Y., Shin, J., Crippen, K., & Carroll, B. (2025). Building Explainable Recommender System for Engineering Students Work-Integrated Learning (WIL). In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2025) (pp. 549–553). International Educational Data Mining Society. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15870223

BibTeX
@inproceedings{hwang2025building,
  author = {Hwang, Woorin and Li, Hongming and Aguinalde, Anna Pauline and Zhang, Yilin and Shin, Jinnie and Crippen, Kent and Carroll, Bruce},
  title = {Building Explainable Recommender System for Engineering Students Work-Integrated Learning (WIL)},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2025)},
  year = {2025},
  pages = {549--553},
  publisher = {International Educational Data Mining Society},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15870223},
  url = {https://educationaldatamining.org/EDM2025/proceedings/2025.EDM.poster-demo-papers.271/index.html}
}

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