The success of ePortfolio-based programming learning style diagnosis: Exploring the role of a heuristic fuzzy knowledge fusion

► ePortfolio can assist in diagnosing students' programming learning styles. ► Cat intelligence is a good viewpoint for building multi-objective optimization. ► The CatOpt algorithm proposed is effective for fuzzy knowledge fusion. ► The CatOpt algorithm proposed outperformed the compared heuristic optimizations. ► The heuristic knowledge fusion improved the validity and stability of diagnosis.