User Control Levels in Educational Recommender Systems Studied

Researchers designed and evaluated an interactive educational recommender system (ERS) within the MOOC platform CourseMapper to investigate how different levels of user control affect perceptions. A between-subjects user study (N=184) examined varying control over input (user profile), process (recommendation algorithm), and output (recommendations). Results show that enabling user control influences perceived control, transparency, trust, satisfaction, and perceived quality. The study addresses a gap in understanding user control effects in ERSs.