IMPORTANCE AND OPPORTUNITIES OF SENTIMENT ANALYSIS IN DEVELOPING E-LEARNING SYSTEMS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

The means of communication and interaction have benefited from incredible changes over the past decade, Social Media increasingly replacing traditional environments. Considering the collaborative nature of the learning sector and consequently the importance of communication and interaction within it, we intuitively realize that Social Media represents the future of educational systems, the research in this field pointing towards the integration of e-Learning with Social Media. However, in order to deliver efficient educational systems, it is not enough to identify the technological means that are conducive to their development, but is also important to shape these means depending on the needs of the target group. When we discuss about Social Media and learning, it is noticed that individuals are the direct beneficiaries and the main force of these environments. Therefore, it is important to understand their behavior, their needs and wants. Analyzing students\u27 attitudes, identifying their positive or negative reactions, or even the refined emotions they have towards learning, can be an extremely difficult task due to their diversity in countless ways. In this regard, an increasingly used tool whose accuracy cannot be challenged is the Sentiment Analysis. The inherent nature of Social Media tools offers multiple areas of application of Sentiment Analysis. Therefore, this paper will discuss the importance of Sentiment Analysis towards e-Learning development through Social Media, considering current evidence. Secondly, the paper aims to identify the opportunities offered by Social Media with regards to Sentiment Analysis implementation and how feedback on educational data can be collected via such online environments to help improve educational processes in an e-Learning context