Adaptive educational hypermedia
Encyclopedia
Adaptive educational hypermedia is one of the first and most popular kinds of adaptive hypermedia
. It applies adaptive hypermedia to the domain of education
. Example systems of adaptive educational hypermedia are ELM-ART by Gerhard Weber et al., InterBook by Peter Brusilovsky et al., Personal Reader by Nicola Henze et al., AHA! by Paul de Bra et al., LearnFit by El Bachari, Smart.FM, Knewton, and Carnegie Learning.
In contrast to traditional e-learning/electronic learning (and face-to-face education) systems, whereby all learners are offered or even directed a standard series of hyperlink
s, adaptive educational hypermedia tailors what the learner sees to that learner's goals, abilities, needs, interests, and knowledge
of the subject, by providing hyperlinks that are most relevant to the user. Essentially, the teaching tools "adapt" to the learner. Of course, this requires the system to be able to effectively infer the learner's needs and desires.
Many fields of research including human-computer interaction, educational technology
, cognitive science
, intelligent tutoring systems and computer engineering
are contributing to the development of adaptive hypermedia. Unlike intelligent tutoring systems, however, adaptive educational hypermedia does not target stand-alone systems, but hypermedia
systems.
Moreover, the use of adaptive hypermedia
is not limited to formal (or informal) education or training endeavours. Such systems can, e.g., increase profits by adapting to consumers' searches (sometimes unconscious) for goods, services, and experiences. Thus, systems like Amazon
are also examples of adaptive hypermedia, recommending books based on user preferences and prior history.
Other application fields of adaptive hypermedia, beside of adaptive e-learning
and adaptive e-commerce applications can be adaptive e-government applications. Generally speaking, adaptive hypermedia systems can be useful anywhere where hypertext
and hypermedia is used.
The most popular adaptive hypermedia systems are web
-based systems.
An interesting aspect of adaptive hypermedia is that it makes distinction between adaptation (system-driven personalization
and modifications) and adaptability (user-driven personalization and modifications). One way of looking at it is that adaptation is automatic, whereas adaptability is not. From an epistemic point of view, adaptation can be described as analytic, a-priori, whereas adaptability is synthetic, a-posteriori. In other words, any adaptable system, as it 'contains' a human, is by default 'intelligent', whereas an adaptive system that presents 'intelligence
' is more surprising and thus more interesting. This conforms with the general preference of the adaptive hypermedia research community, which considers adaptation more interesting. However, the truth of adaptive hypermedia systems is somewhere in the middle, combining and balancing adaptation and adaptability.
The system architecture utilizes the three models in tandem. The conditional elements of these modules use simple variables representing how much to weight certain content(i.e. The likelihood of a piece of content showing up) depending on the user's preferences and history. Through use of the user model, a user can see basic concepts without any restriction. After seeing the basic concepts, a variable updates and allows the user to view advanced concepts in relation to the concept they have just seen. Additionally, as the user peruses more content, the system keeps track of the variables to build and adjust a knowledge level variable. As the user is deemed knowledgeable enough by the conditions, links and concepts considered too easy will be removed to streamline and simplify the experience for the user.
In the first two phases of the study, an expert review and one-to-one evaluation was conducted. The expert review consisted of “a teaching/training expert, an instructional design expert, a subject-matter expert, an educational technologist
and a subject sophisticates (i.e. a student who has successfully completed the course)” while the one-to-one evaluation consisted of ten fourth year undergraduate students who were studying Multimedia Technology Systems (2003, p. 11).
In regards to program control mode, subjects suggested that the instructional guidance at the bottom of the screen should be reduced to give more screen space to the content. Hyperlinks were colored by importance to persuade or dissuade students' choices, however, the subjects did not like that the gray links(signifying content deemed currently unsuitable for the user) were not click-able(2003, p. 11-12).
Following the feedback, the evaluators improved the system and started a new phase. For the third phase, ten more fourth year undergraduate Multimedia Technology Systems students were selected based on their score making sure it fell within one standard deviation of the mean. The selection of the subjects was in line to represent the actual student population.
Following the third phase, the feedback showed that the majority of the students were satisfied with the initial adaptation based on their cognitive style and that they found useful the ability to change the initial stage through the student model. They also indicated as very important, having different instructional modes in order to accommodate their individual needs. Finally, they were satisfied with the ability to have complete control over how the system served them content.
Triantafillou's iterative design of a hypermedia system takes steps towards creating a successful adaptive model. Two modes of control exist to the user allowing them more or less freedom to peruse the content of the course. Both users who used the system with program control and learner control successfully improved their pretest performance to their post-test performance. More research is necessary to see if students utilizing program control can achieve levels of improvement on par or better than students utilizing learner control.
Some important conclusions from this study include redesigning navigation trees to show more localized navigation and less overall hierarchy in order to reduce cognitive overhead. Additionally they concluded it is worthwhile to redesign the measures of difficulty and concept coverage so that it is in direct relation to a user's knowledge model. However, the main problem encountered is how to properly define relationships between documents and difficulty ratings and thresholds in proper relation to the user and content. Also importantly, it is noted that proper knowledge of the content in the course is important when deciding relationships between content. In other words, designing an adaptive educational course might be best done on an individual basis rather than creating an all encompassing format for all courses of varying areas of focus.
Adaptive hypermedia
In contrast to traditional e-learning/electronic learning, e-business, and e-government systems, whereby all users are offered or even directed a standard series of hyperlinks, adaptive hypermedia tailors what the user sees to the learner's goals, abilities, interests, knowledge, etc...
. It applies adaptive hypermedia to the domain of education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
. Example systems of adaptive educational hypermedia are ELM-ART by Gerhard Weber et al., InterBook by Peter Brusilovsky et al., Personal Reader by Nicola Henze et al., AHA! by Paul de Bra et al., LearnFit by El Bachari, Smart.FM, Knewton, and Carnegie Learning.
In contrast to traditional e-learning/electronic learning (and face-to-face education) systems, whereby all learners are offered or even directed a standard series of hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
s, adaptive educational hypermedia tailors what the learner sees to that learner's goals, abilities, needs, interests, and knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
of the subject, by providing hyperlinks that are most relevant to the user. Essentially, the teaching tools "adapt" to the learner. Of course, this requires the system to be able to effectively infer the learner's needs and desires.
Many fields of research including human-computer interaction, educational technology
Educational technology
Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources." The term educational technology is often associated with, and encompasses, instructional theory and...
, cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, intelligent tutoring systems and computer engineering
Computer engineering
Computer engineering, also called computer systems engineering, is a discipline that integrates several fields of electrical engineering and computer science required to develop computer systems. Computer engineers usually have training in electronic engineering, software design, and...
are contributing to the development of adaptive hypermedia. Unlike intelligent tutoring systems, however, adaptive educational hypermedia does not target stand-alone systems, but hypermedia
Hypermedia
Hypermedia is a computer-based information retrieval system that enables a user to gain or provide access to texts, audio and video recordings, photographs and computer graphics related to a particular subject.Hypermedia is a term created by Ted Nelson....
systems.
Moreover, the use of adaptive hypermedia
Adaptive hypermedia
In contrast to traditional e-learning/electronic learning, e-business, and e-government systems, whereby all users are offered or even directed a standard series of hyperlinks, adaptive hypermedia tailors what the user sees to the learner's goals, abilities, interests, knowledge, etc...
is not limited to formal (or informal) education or training endeavours. Such systems can, e.g., increase profits by adapting to consumers' searches (sometimes unconscious) for goods, services, and experiences. Thus, systems like Amazon
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
are also examples of adaptive hypermedia, recommending books based on user preferences and prior history.
Other application fields of adaptive hypermedia, beside of adaptive e-learning
E-learning
E-learning comprises all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching. The information and communication systems, whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process...
and adaptive e-commerce applications can be adaptive e-government applications. Generally speaking, adaptive hypermedia systems can be useful anywhere where hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
and hypermedia is used.
The most popular adaptive hypermedia systems are web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
-based systems.
An interesting aspect of adaptive hypermedia is that it makes distinction between adaptation (system-driven personalization
Personalization
Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined mainly to the Web, it is increasingly becoming a factor in education, health care Personalization involves using technology to accommodate the differences between individuals. Once confined...
and modifications) and adaptability (user-driven personalization and modifications). One way of looking at it is that adaptation is automatic, whereas adaptability is not. From an epistemic point of view, adaptation can be described as analytic, a-priori, whereas adaptability is synthetic, a-posteriori. In other words, any adaptable system, as it 'contains' a human, is by default 'intelligent', whereas an adaptive system that presents 'intelligence
Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....
' is more surprising and thus more interesting. This conforms with the general preference of the adaptive hypermedia research community, which considers adaptation more interesting. However, the truth of adaptive hypermedia systems is somewhere in the middle, combining and balancing adaptation and adaptability.
Framework
A common method or framework of design for an adaptive educational system is with three inter-dependent modules.- Domain Model - The domain model contains several concepts that stand as the backbone for the content of the system. Each concept has a set of topics. Topics represent individual pieces of knowledge for each domain and the size of each topic varies in relation to the particular domain. Additionally, topics are linked to each other forming a semantic network. This network is the structure of the knowledge domain.
- User Model - The student model consists of a personal profile (which includes static data, e.g., name and password), cognitive profile (adaptable data such as preferences), and a student knowledge profile.
- Adaptation Module - The adaptation module displays information to the user based on his or her cognitive preferences. For instance, the module will divide a page's content into chunks with conditions set to only display to certain users or preparing two variants of a single concept page with a similar condition.
The system architecture utilizes the three models in tandem. The conditional elements of these modules use simple variables representing how much to weight certain content(i.e. The likelihood of a piece of content showing up) depending on the user's preferences and history. Through use of the user model, a user can see basic concepts without any restriction. After seeing the basic concepts, a variable updates and allows the user to view advanced concepts in relation to the concept they have just seen. Additionally, as the user peruses more content, the system keeps track of the variables to build and adjust a knowledge level variable. As the user is deemed knowledgeable enough by the conditions, links and concepts considered too easy will be removed to streamline and simplify the experience for the user.
Aristotle University
Conducted by Evangelos Triantafillou, Andreas Pomportsis, and Stavros Demetriadis of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. As Triantafillou (2003) states, the objective of this study is “an attempt to examine some of the critical variables, which may be important in the design of an adaptive hypermedia system based on student’s cognitive style.” (p. 4) Their system offers users two modes of control to users and users have the option of changing between the two at any time. Learner control mode allows the user to view the entire hierarchy of concepts and topics and move freely through the course via links in the left sidebar where as program control mode is automated by the system by only allowing the user to move forwards or backwards in the course's content structure.In the first two phases of the study, an expert review and one-to-one evaluation was conducted. The expert review consisted of “a teaching/training expert, an instructional design expert, a subject-matter expert, an educational technologist
Educational technologist
An educational technologist is someone who is trained in the field of educational technology. Educational technologists try to analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate process and tools for to enhance learning .- See also :* Instructional technology...
and a subject sophisticates (i.e. a student who has successfully completed the course)” while the one-to-one evaluation consisted of ten fourth year undergraduate students who were studying Multimedia Technology Systems (2003, p. 11).
In regards to program control mode, subjects suggested that the instructional guidance at the bottom of the screen should be reduced to give more screen space to the content. Hyperlinks were colored by importance to persuade or dissuade students' choices, however, the subjects did not like that the gray links(signifying content deemed currently unsuitable for the user) were not click-able(2003, p. 11-12).
Following the feedback, the evaluators improved the system and started a new phase. For the third phase, ten more fourth year undergraduate Multimedia Technology Systems students were selected based on their score making sure it fell within one standard deviation of the mean. The selection of the subjects was in line to represent the actual student population.
Following the third phase, the feedback showed that the majority of the students were satisfied with the initial adaptation based on their cognitive style and that they found useful the ability to change the initial stage through the student model. They also indicated as very important, having different instructional modes in order to accommodate their individual needs. Finally, they were satisfied with the ability to have complete control over how the system served them content.
Triantafillou's iterative design of a hypermedia system takes steps towards creating a successful adaptive model. Two modes of control exist to the user allowing them more or less freedom to peruse the content of the course. Both users who used the system with program control and learner control successfully improved their pretest performance to their post-test performance. More research is necessary to see if students utilizing program control can achieve levels of improvement on par or better than students utilizing learner control.
Katholieke Universiteit
Conducted by Denise Pilar da Silva, Rafaël Van Durm, Erik Duval, Henk Olivié of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Similar to the Aristotle University study, a prototype adaptive hypermedia system was created. This particular system uses three frames within the single browser window to display the navigation tree, relevant content links, and the content itself. It also utilized a link hiding feature to remove links to content already viewed, however, this was ultimately received as confusing.Some important conclusions from this study include redesigning navigation trees to show more localized navigation and less overall hierarchy in order to reduce cognitive overhead. Additionally they concluded it is worthwhile to redesign the measures of difficulty and concept coverage so that it is in direct relation to a user's knowledge model. However, the main problem encountered is how to properly define relationships between documents and difficulty ratings and thresholds in proper relation to the user and content. Also importantly, it is noted that proper knowledge of the content in the course is important when deciding relationships between content. In other words, designing an adaptive educational course might be best done on an individual basis rather than creating an all encompassing format for all courses of varying areas of focus.
External links
- Adaptive hypermedia bibliography of references, Technical University of Eindhoven, Section of Information Systems
- authoring of adaptive hypermediaAuthoring of adaptive hypermedia-Definition:Authoring of Adaptive hypermedia comprises the design and creation process of adaptive hypermedia: creation of content and adaptive behaviour -Definition:Authoring of Adaptive hypermedia (AH) comprises the design and creation process of adaptive hypermedia: creation of content...