Design of adaptive hypermedia learning systems: A cognitive style approach

In the past decade, a number of adaptive hypermedia learning systems have been developed. However, most of these systems tailor presentation content and navigational support solely according to students’ prior knowledge. On the other hand, previous research suggested that cognitive styles significantly affect student learning because they refer to how learners process and organize information. To this end, the study presented in this paper developed an adaptive hypermedia learning system tailored to students’ cognitive styles, with an emphasis on Pask’s Holist–Serialist dimension. How students react to this adaptive hypermedia learning system, including both learning performance and perceptions, was examined in this study. Forty-four undergraduate and postgraduate students participated in the study. The findings indicated that, in general, adapting to cognitive styles improves student learning. The results also showed that the adaptive hypermedia learning system have more effects on students’ perceptions than performance. The implications of these results for the design of adaptive hypermedia learning systems are discussed.     

Methods and techniques of adaptive hypermedia

Adaptive hypermedia is a new direction of research within the area of adaptive and user model-based interfaces. Adaptive hypermedia (AH) systems build a model of the individual user and apply it for adaptation to that user, for example, to adapt the content of a hypermedia page to the user's knowledge and goals, or to suggest the most relevant links to follow. AH systems are used now in several application areas where the hyperspace is reasonably large and where a hypermedia application is expected to be used by individuals with different goals, knowledge and backgrounds. This paper is a review of existing work on adaptive hypermedia. The paper is centered around a set of identified methods and techniques of AH. It introduces several dimensions of classification of AH systems, methods and techniques and describes the most important of them.     

自适应超媒体技术及其在智能化CAI中的应用

将自适应超媒体的方法和技术应用于智能教学系统,可充分体现因材施教的思想,提高学生的学习效果。文章介绍了自适应超媒体系统的关键方法和技术,描述了智能教学系统的组成与结构,然后结合自适应教学系统KDAES的研制讨论了自适应技术对教学系统智能化的支持及系统核心模块——学生模型的构建。     

The narrative approach to personalisation

This article describes the narrative approach to personalisation. This novel approach to the generation of personalised adaptive hypermedia experiences employs runtime reconciliation between a personalisation strategy and a number of contextual models (e.g. user and domain). The approach also advocates the late binding of suitable content and services to the generated personalised pathway resulting in an interactive composition that comprises services as well as content. This article provides a detailed definition of the narrative approach to personalisation and showcases the approach through the examination of two use-cases: the personalised digital educational games developed by the ELEKTRA and 80Days projects; and the personalised learning activities realised as part of the AMAS project. These use-cases highlight the general applicability of the narrative approach and how it has been applied to create a diverse range of real-world systems.     

A personalized semantic portal for enhanced user support

Although many advances have been made in semantic portal research, often links to relevant pages are not shown and the same content/links are presented to users that have different background and interests. This paper introduces a novel semantic portal, SEMPort, to support the browsing of users based on personalization and enriched semantic hyperlinks. Our semantic portal makes a novel contribution by integrating adaptive hypermedia methods and enriched semantic hyperlinks into semantic portal technologies to provide better navigation. SEMPort supports different personalization such as adaptive link sorting and adaptive link annotation based on interests of individual users. Enriched semantic links are also supplied to guide users to relevant pages. In addition, easy-to-use and real-time content maintenance mechanisms are provided, which is important for the evolution of the content. Evaluations carried out to assess the semantic portal include performance evaluations, interface usability using Nielsen's heuristics and empirical user studies. This paper also provides an overview and comparison to the state-of-the-art as well as outlining future directions for semantic portals.     

Towards new forms of knowledge communication: the adaptive dimension of a web-based learning environment

Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems aim to increase the functionality of hypermedia by making it personalised to individual learners. The adaptive dimension of these systems mainly supports knowledge communication between the system and the learner by adapting the content or the appearance of hypermedia to the knowledge level, goals and other characteristics of each learner. The main objectives are to protect learners from cognitive overload and disorientation by supporting them to find the most relevant content and path in the hyperspace. In the approach presented in this paper, learners' knowledge level and individual traits are used as valuable information to represent learners' current state and personalise the educational system accordingly, in order to facilitate learners to achieve their personal learning goals and objectives. Learners' knowledge level is approached through a qualitative model of the level of performance that learners exhibit with respect to the concepts they study and is used to adapt the lesson contents and the navigation support. Learners' individual traits and especially their learning style represent the way learners perceive and process information, and are exploited to adapt the presentation of the educational material of a lesson. The proposed approach has been implemented through various adaptation technologies and incorporated into a prototype hypermedia system. Finally, a pilot study has been conducted to investigate system's educational effectiveness.     

Adaptive Hypermedia

Adaptive hypermedia is a relatively new direction of research on the crossroads of hypermedia and user modeling. Adaptive hypermedia systems build a model of the goals, preferences and knowledge of each individual user, and use this model throughout the interaction with the user, in order to adapt to the needs of that user. The goal of this paper is to present the state of the art in adaptive hypermedia at the eve of the year 2000, and to highlight some prospects for the future. This paper attempts to serve both the newcomers and the experts in the area of adaptive hypermedia by building on an earlier comprehensive review (Brusilovsky, 1996; Brusilovsky, 1998).     

Java hypermedia: on and beyond the world wide web

The world wide web (WWW) has made hypermedia applications widespread. Originally, the WWW was used only for ‘freestyle’, unrestricted browsing and its foundation technologies reflect this. Now, developers are working on more advanced hypermedia for new application domains. Improvements in graphical user interfaces, adaptive guidance and integrated navigation support are the main objectives. In this paper, we present Java as a mature implementation language for advanced Internet hypermedia. A minimalistic Java approach (MJA) towards development is introduced. MJA integrates Java with existing object-oriented hypermedia design methodologies. MJA is illustrated with HyperMap, a browser application for spatial hypermedia.     

Applying Web usage mining for personalizing hyperlinks in Web-based adaptive educational systems

Nowadays, the application of Web mining techniques in e-learning and Web-based adaptive educational systems is increasing exponentially. In this paper, we propose an advanced architecture for a personalization system to facilitate Web mining. A specific Web mining tool is developed and a recommender engine is integrated into the AHA! system in order to help the instructor to carry out the whole Web mining process. Our objective is to be able to recommend to a student the most appropriate links/Web pages within the AHA! system to visit next. Several experiments are carried out with real data provided by Eindhoven University of Technology students in order to test both the architecture proposed and the algorithms used. Finally, we have also described the meaning of several recommendations, starting from the rules discovered by the Web mining algorithms.     

A Fuzzy-Based Approach to Stereotype Selection in Hypermedia

This paper presents a stereotype-based user model for adaptive hypermedia systems. We use a suitable algebraic fuzzy structure which can adequately reflect some features of the user in the model, and apply this model to adapt the navigation and the content of hypermedia nodes to the user's needs. The model includes temporal representations of the user and approximates every real user by a set of stereotypes, from which the one realizing the best approximation can always be extracted. The set of stereotypes is the support set of the structure and the operations defined therein may be supplied with adequate semantics which allow for the selection of the stereotype.     

基于结构特性的超媒体模型

将超媒体的结构特性与形式语言学理论相结合,提供了一种有效地分析超媒体动态结构的特性的方法,该方法将超毁体组件集合映射为语言中的抽象符号集合,组件集合之上的链映射为语言中建立单词的方法,超媒体的结构化机械制映射为语言中的抽象符号集号,组件集合之上的链映射为语言中建立单词的方法,超媒体的结构化机制映射为语言中描述单词集合构造机制的语法,超媒体模拟为转换机,“链引导”动作模拟为“匹配对”序列,“链引导”的计算结果产生与上下文无关文法相对应的虚拟文档,从而为进一步研究超媒体的浏鉴语义及其它动态特性提供了理论基础。     

Towards A New Authoring Methodology for Large-Scale Hypermedia Applications

As the amount of information technology increases, managing information resources, so that the correct people can find the information easily, becomes a critical issue. Hypermedia systems are considered one solution to this problem as they provide a means for representing higher level relationships between the underlying information. However, the amount of information available electronically is increasing at an accelerated rate. Using standard hypermedia authoring techniques, the effort required managing and maintaining large-scale hypermedia systems is enormous. Hypermedia authoring in the large requires new methodologies if it is going to be feasible.This paper presents a new model for building and structuring large-scale hypermedia applications. It describes a case study that explored the delivery of hypermedia information in an industrial environment on a small scale. Models and techniques developed for that case study were then refined and augmented so they could support the construction of large-scale hypermedia systems. In order to support such endeavors a new linking model is presented that allows the author to explicitly represent abstract concepts contained within the underlying information and interconnect them in some meaningful manner. A prototype system applying this linking technique is presented.     

Open hypermedia as user controlled meta data for the Web

This paper introduces an approach to utilise open hypermedia structures such as links, annotations, collections and guided tours as meta data for Web resources. The paper introduces an XML based data format, called Open Hypermedia Interchange Format, OHIF, for such hypermedia structures. OHIF resembles XLink with respect to its representation of out-of-line links, but it goes beyond XLink with a more rich set of structuring mechanisms, including e.g. composites. Moreover OHIF includes an addressing mechanisms (LocSpecs) that goes beyond XPointer and URL in its ability to locate non-XML data segments. By means of the Webvise system, OHIF structures can be authored, imposed on Web pages, and finally linked on the Web as any ordinary Web resource. Following a link to an OHIF file automatically invokes a Webvise download of the meta data structures and the annotated Web content will be displayed in the browser. Moreover, the Webvise system provides support for users to create, manipulate, and share the OHIF structures together with custom made Web pages and MS Office 2000 documents on WebDAV servers. These Webvise facilities goes beyond earlier open hypermedia systems in that it now allows fully distributed open hypermedia linking between Web pages and WebDAV aware desktop applications. The paper describes the OHIF format and demonstrates how the Webvise system handles OHIF. Finally, it argues for better support for handling user controlled meta data, e.g. support for linking in non-XML data, integration of external linking in the Web infrastructure, and collaboration support for external structures and meta-data.     

A hypervideo system generator

In the past, a number of approaches have been proposed for the modeling and implementation of hypermedia and multimedia systems. However, automatic implementation is still lacking with regard to setting up various hypervideo systems. This paper proposes a hypervideo system generator for automatic implementation of various hypervideo systems. The proposed system is established by using a Generalized HyperVideo System (GHVS) model. A HyperVideo Linking Generator (HVLG) is introduced to on-line authoring of a GHVS program for specifying a hypervideo system. A HyperVideo Browser System (HVBS) has been developed for navigating various hypervideo systems. The proposed hypervideo generator has been established on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, in which several other educational hypervideo applications have been successfully developed. Moreover, with the help of this prototype, the development time to build such hypervideo applications is considerably reduced when compared with the development of the same application using existing programming languages. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive educational hypermedia accommodating learning styles: A content analysis of publications from 2000 to 2011

Implementing instructional interventions to accommodate learner differences has received considerable attention. Among these individual difference variables, the empirical evidence regarding the pedagogical value of learning styles has been questioned, but the research on the issue continues. Recent developments in Web-based implementations have led scholars to reconsider the learning style research in adaptive systems. The current study involved a content analysis of recent studies on adaptive educational hypermedia (AEH) which addressed learning styles. After an extensive search on electronic databases, seventy studies were selected and exposed to a document analysis. Study features were classified under several themes such as the research purposes, methodology, features of adaptive interventions and student modeling, and findings. The analysis revealed that the majority of studies proposed a framework or model for adaptivity whereas few studies addressed the effectiveness of learning style-based AEH. Scales were used for learning style identification more than automatic student modeling. One third of the studies provided a framework without empirical evaluation with students. Findings on concrete learning outcomes were not strong enough; however, several studies revealed that suggested models influenced student satisfaction and success. Current trends, potential research gaps and implications were discussed.     

Modeling Elementary Cognitive Abilities for Adaptive Hypermedia Presentation

The adaptation of hypermedia can be carried out at three levels, namely the content, navigation and presentation level. The presentation level is the least studied of the three, apparently because it refers to user properties that are not easy to model. In this paper, we present a new approach to modeling cognitive abilities that relies on basic mental functionalities. We describe the Cognitive User Modeling for Adaptive Presentation of Hyper-Documents (CUMAPH) environment, which mainly provides an authoring tool and an adaptation engine. The aim of this environment is to adapt a hyper-document presentation by selecting the elements that best fit the user cognitive profile. Its architecture is based on four main components: a cognitive user model, a hyper-document builder, an adaptation engine and a generic style sheet. To validate our approach, we designed an innovative protocol and conducted an experimental study involving 39 students. The first results show that an adaptive presentation can significantly increase the efficiency of hypermedia presentations.     

智能教学系统中知识表示模型的研究与设计

研究了智能教学系统功能与结构。分析了知识库模型在智能教学系统中的重要地位;通过对知识库中的教学内容与教学规则两类知识的分析和对超媒体知识表示的研究,构建了一个基于层次结构的超媒体网络模型,并在知识网络图中节点里嵌入教学规则,以实现教学内容的动态组织、呈现和教学过程中的自适应导航。该模型为教学系统的决策与分析提供了智能的辅助手段。     

A hypermedia authoring tool for augmented and virtual reality

Most existing hypermedia authoring systems are intended for use on desktop computers. These systems are typically designed for the creation of 2D documents and therefore employ 2D authoring mechanisms. In contrast, authoring systems for nontraditional multimedia/hypermedia experiences for 3D virtual or augmented worlds focus mainly on creating separate media objects and embedding them within the user's surroundings. As a result, linking these media objects to create 3D hypermedia is a tedious manual task. To address this issue, we present an authoring tool for creating and editing linked 3D hypermedia narratives that are interwoven with a wearable computer user's surrounding environment. Our system is designed for use by authors who are not programmers, and allows them to preview their results on a desktop workstation, as well as with an augmented or virtual reality system.     

Personalization in an interactive learning environment through a virtual character

Traditional hypermedia applications present the same content and provide identical navigational support to all users. Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (AHS) make it possible to construct personalized presentations to each user, according to preferences and needs identified. We present in this paper an alternative approach to educational AHS where a virtual character personalizes the interaction with the user through the use of a particular recommender system. The character has natural language communication abilities; it can learn students’ profiles and use this knowledge to recommend appropriate contents and activities. Through its interaction with the user, the character is able to collect and organize information about students in order to identify appropriate suggestions of contents. The recommender system employs a knowledge representation scheme that is easy to understand and to modify, enabling teachers/tutors to explore the types of recommendations being made and to appreciate why they are made. An experiment with computer science students was carried out in order to validate the approach proposed. The results of the experiment showed that the presentation of personalized links through a virtual character had a positive impact in the users’ perception of the system as a learning tool. The combination of the virtual character with a recommender system proved to be a good alternative for the delivery of personalized contents without making constant changes in the main user interface. This approach provides mechanisms to guide users through paths of study followed by students with similar profiles, without violating the human–computer interaction principle of perceived stability.