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Technische UniversiteitEindhovenUniversity of Technology
Incorporating Cognitive/Learning Stylesin a General-Purpose
Adaptive Hypermedia System
Natalia StashJune 25, 2008
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Technische UniversiteitEindhovenUniversity of Technology
Contents• Introduction• Goals of the Dissertation• Implementation of a
General-Purpose Adaptive Hypermedia System AHA! (Adaptive Hypermedia Architecture)
• Identification of Strategies Corresponding to Cognitive/Learning Styles (CS/LS)
• Application and Visualization of CS/LS Strategies in AHA!• Approach Validation and Evaluation• Conclusions and Future Work
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Technische UniversiteitEindhovenUniversity of Technology
Subject of the Dissertation
Adaptive Hypermedia
Computer Science topic
Cognitive/Learning Styles
Cognitive Psychology topic
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What is Adaptive Hypermedia (AH)?
Adaptive Hypermedia & Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (AHS) allow to solve traditional hypermedia problems. They store user information in the user model and apply it for:
• adapting link structure and • adapting content presentation
Problems with traditional hypermedia:• navigation through a rich link structure• the same information for everyone
Hypermedia – non-sequential information, which is a combination of different media (such as text, images, audio)
Classic example of hypermedia: World Wide Web (WWW)
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Application Areas of AHS
• Before AHA! (Adaptive Hypermedia Architecture) there were only special-purpose AHS used for creating e.g.:
- online educational courses
- virtual museums
- online information kiosks
- etc.
• However there were no general-purpose tools
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What are Cognitive/Learning Styles (CS/LS)?
imager vs. verbalizer global vs. sequential
active vs. reflective
Individual differences in perceiving and processing information, preferred ways of learning. Examples of CS/LS:
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Why Applying Cognitive/Learning Styles?
• Learner’s awareness of his/her style• Matching teaching method (or instructional strategy)
with CS/LS may increase learner’s performance• Deliberate mismatching can help develop new skills• Letting learners try different instruction strategies
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Goals of the Dissertation1. Creating a General-Purpose AH Tool
novelty: – before AHA! there were only special-purpose tools
2. Providing Adaptation to Cognitive/Learning Styles– bridge the gap between AH and CS/LS– as a proof that a general-purpose tool has been creatednovelty: – most AHS with support for CS/LS are bound to certain
models– CS/LS representation is predefined by the developers of
the AHS rather than the developers of adaptive applications, pedagogues or psychologists
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Design Requirements for a General-Purpose Tool
(based on overview of AHS and AHAM)• adaptation types and techniques (overview of AHS)
• aspects used for adaptation (overview of AHS & AHAM)
• arbitrary concept relationships (overview of AHS & AHAM)
• generic adaptation rules (AHAM)
• handling non-monotonic user model updates and cycles in adaptation rules (AHAM)
Design wishes • Authoring tools (overview of AHS)• Performance (overview of AHS)
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AHA! : from version1.0 to version 3.0
WWW server
DM/AMlocal
pages UM
End-user
DM - Domain ModelAM - Adaptation ModelUM - User Model
AHA! engine
Java servlets
Pages from external WWW servers
Manager
Authoring tools
Concept EditorGraph AuthorForm Editor
Java Applets
“aspects used for adaptation” & “arbitrary concept relationships”“generic adaptation rules”
“non-monotonic UM updates”
“handlingcycles”
Design requirement“adaptation types and techniques”
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Design Wish: Authoring Tools(Graph Author)
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Design Wishes
• Authoring Tools (overview of AHS)
– high-level Graph Author
• Performance (overview of AHS)
– AHA! achieves sub-second response time
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Correlations Between CS/LSVisualGlobal
Analytic
Field-dependentField-independent
WholistAnalytic
VerbalizerImager
SensorIntuitive
AssimilatingAccommodating
ActivistReflectorActive
ReflectiveSensingIntuitiveVisualVerbalGlobal
SequentialSerialist(W)holist
Meaning-orientedApplication-oriented
Reproduction-orientedUndirected
Riding’smodel
Dunn & Dunnmodel
Pask’smodel
Felder-Silverman
model
Honey & Mumford
model
MBTI
Vermunt’s model
Witkin’s modelKolb’s model
...
...
......
IntrovertExtravert
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Types of Adaptation Strategies • Instructional strategies
- selection of items- ordering information or providing different navigation paths
• Instructional meta-strategies – inference or monitoring strategies, to detect user’s learning style,e.g. preferences for:- certain types of information (e.g., text vs. image)- reading order (e.g., breadth-first vs. depth-first)
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Learning Styles Strategies Structure in LAG-XLSstrategynamedescriptionif+
if
thencondition
else
then
sort?select?
setDefault*action*
else
sort?select?
setDefault*action*
showContent*
select
showContentDefault*showLink*
linkTo*
sort
setDefault
expressionattributeName
attributeName
attributeName
linkToshowLink
comment
UMvariable
action
expression
attributeName
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Presentation for Imager+Global Learner
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Presentation for Verbal+Sequential Learner
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Inferring Preferences for Image or Text
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Presentation for Active Learner
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Presentation for Reflective Learner
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Approach Validation and Evaluation• Representing features of AHS providing adaptation to
CS/LS in AHA!• Evaluation with students from TU/e
- understanding of how the system works- authoring ease- satisfaction with the resulting presentation
• Validation with learning styles experts- satisfaction with the effect of the predefined strategies- expressivity of LAG-XLS language for defining strategies
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Conclusion• We showed that it is possible to create a
general-purpose AH tool
• We demonstrated the general-purpose nature of AHA! by showing adaptation to CS/LS:
- support for CS/LS implemented as an extension to the created tool
- no changes to the core engine were required
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Future Work
• Address the option for searching information in adaptive applications
• Creating various types of strategies not only limited to cognitive/learning styles
• Group user models and adaptation: use information about some users to help others