In e-learning, recommendation systems have proven to be highly efficient for improving learners' performance and knowledge. They can manage the different pedagogical resources and simplify the workload for the instructor and learners as well. Throughout the years, recommendation systems in e-learning have wit-nessed a major evolution since the 2000s. Several aspects have been developed, including techniques involved, test data (...). In this respect, this paper analyses the evolution of recommendation systems in e-learning since 2000 with a focus on the evolution sides. It furthermore addresses areas not fully addressed to date. A set of recommendation systems is identified and then analysed in order to define techniques used, as well as algorithms deployed.

E-learning is renowned as one of the highly effective modalities of learning. Social learning, in turn, is considered to be of major importance as it promotes collaboration between learners. For properly managing learning resources, recommender systems have been implemented in e-learning to enhance learners' experience. Whilst recommender systems are of widespread concern in online learning, it is still unclear to educators how recommender systems can improve the learning process and have a positive impact on learning. This paper seeks to provide an overview of the recommender systems proposed in e-learning between 2007 and the first part of 2021. Out of 100 initially identified publications for the period between 2007 and the first part of 2021, 51 articles were included for final synthesis, according to specific criteria. The descriptive results show that most of the disciplines involved in educational recommender systems papers have approached e-learning in a general way without putting as much emphasis on social learning, and that recommender systems based on explicit feedbacks and ratings were the most frequently used in empirical studies. The synthesis of results presents several recommender systems types in e-learning: (1) Content-based recommender systems, (2) Collaborative-filtering recommender systems, (3) Hybrid recommender systems and (4) Recommender systems based on supervised and unsupervised algorithms. The conclusions reflect on the almost lack of critical reflection on the importance of addressing recommender systems in social learning and social educational networks in particular, especially as social learning has particular requirements, the weak databases size used in some research work, the importance of acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of each type of recommender system in an educational context and the need for further exploration of implicit feedbacks more than explicit learners’ feedbacks for more accurate recommendations.

The context of our work falls within the context of social learning networks, particularly recommendation systems. A recommendation system generally consists of proposing objects and items that meet users' needs and expectations. Within social learning, recommendation systems are of paramount importance as they guide learners in their learning path and facilitate their interactions with learning platforms. However, most recommendation systems in online learning are limited to the use of explicit feedback received from learners. In addition to explicit feedback, the new generation of recommendation systems ought to promote implicit feedbacks and actions taken by the stakeholders. In this article, we propose a hybrid recommendation system integrating all the activities carried out by the learners and combining the two notions of correlation and co-occurrence. After expounding our system, the evaluation is performed on a database outlining the interaction of employees with articles available within a Deskdrop platform. The results indicate that the performance of the hybrid approach (70%) exceeds the performance of the non-hybrid recommendation system (30%), and that the hybrid system is more consistent in terms of performance as well.

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