Semantic Rule-based Approach for Supporting Personalised Adaptive E-Learning

Adaptive e-learning systems enhance the efficiency of online education by providing personalised, adaptive contents and user interfaces which change with respect to learner's requirements. In order to understand the learner's requirements, learners with similar learning behaviour have to be grouped into clusters based on the usage data of each learner. In this paper, a clustering technique to group learner's profiles is proposed where learners will be grouped based on similar sequences of accesses to learning material and time spent. A learner's model is designed based on Felder and Silverman learning style model. The clustering algorithm has two different phases, where the first phase considers the all sequences of access of learners which are in the chronological order of accessing the learning components and learning materials on the portal. The second phase considers the time spent on each learning components as a fuzzy membership function and groups the similar sequences of learners into three clusters. Learners in the clusters have similar learning behaviour for providing adaptive interfaces and contents.

This paper considers the issue of the locus of control in adaptive e-learning environments from the perspective of a new stakeholder; the instructional expert. With an ever increasing ability to gain insight into learners based on their online activities, instructors and instructional designers are poised to add value to the process of adaptation, a process normally reserved for either systems designers or the end user. This work describes the design of an e-learning system which provides automated analytics information to these experts for consideration, and then leverages the insights these experts have made as the basis for content and feature adaptation.

It is found that learners prefer to use micro learning mode to conduct learning activities through open educational resources (OERs). However, adaptive micro learning is scarcely supported by current OER platforms. In this paper we focus on profiling an effective micro learning process which is central to establish the raw materials and set up rules for the final adaptive process. This work consists of two parts. First, we conducted an educational data mining and learning analysis study to discover the patterns and rules in micro learning through OER. Then based on its findings, we profiled features of both learners and OERs to reveal the full learning story in order to support the decision making process. Incorporating educational data mining and learning analysis, an cloud-based architecture for Micro Learning as a Service (MLaaS) was designed to integrate all necessary procedures together as a complete service for delivering micro OERs. The MLaaS also provides a platform for resource sharing and exchanging in peer-to-peer learning environment. Working principle of a key step, namely the computational decision-making of micro OER adaptation, was also introduced.

Deployment of information processing theory to support adaptive e-learning systems: Feasibility study

Purpose – One of the biggest problems in the e-learning distribution process is the lack of quality content and learners' discredit in e-learning content. In order to respond to the various demands of the corporate education field appropriately, it is necessary to search for directions of new e-learning models that are out of traditional e-learning contents. The purpose of this study is to identify recent trend issues related to corporate e-learning and to suggest directions for development. Research design, data, and methodology – Based on the literature review, trend issues that should be considered important in corporate e-learning were derived. Online survey was conducted to evaluate the importance-feasibility of each issue to 13 experts on e-learning and corporate education. The contents of the questionnaire are as follows: 1) recognition of importance and feasibility of trend issues to be considered important in the future corporate education field; 2) factors to be considered in developing future e-learning contents. Results – Six trends derived from a comprehensive literature review. The most important e-learning trends for corporate education field were 'mobile learning', 'micro learning', 'blended learning', 'social learning', 'adaptive learning', ‘engaged learning'. As a result of evaluating the importance and feasibility of each issue, experts point out that 'mobile learning' and 'micro learning' should be actively considered for introduction and utilization at present. In addition, 'social learning' and 'blended learning' need to be actively considered in the near future. On the other hand, experts recognized that 'adaptive learning' and 'engaged learning' need to be prepared from a long-term perspective. Conclusions – There are two main reasons for this result. First, in corporate e-learning, it is important to 1) be able to update on time, 2) the connection with the workplace is important. Second, it requires realistic verification of the expected performance of the learning model. To be considered part of the future are as follows: First, the value and effectiveness of the new e-learning type should be studied. Seconds, e-learning contents should be developed through adopting SAM or Agile methodology. Through this process, we would be able to enhance the quality in e-learning content.

Over the last years, sustainable learning has adopted various dimensions aimed at limiting negative impacts at the individual, social, and technological levels. For this reason, formal classrooms have been partially replaced by e-learning systems in order to ensure the sustainability of these systems. In addition, the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) revolution is gaining an increasing popularity since everyone can improve their knowledge and skills by using these courses. Moreover, MOOCs are, especially interesting, as they handle not only a large amount of teaching data, but also a large number of users with diverse educational and cultural backgrounds. However, the retention rate of learners, which is generally around 10%, raises the question of the sustainability of this mode of teaching. In this paper, we suggest a sustainable e-learning system to tackle school dropout. The idea is to provide courses that correspond to the way in which learners could complete adequately their learning process. To this end, the model will be realized through an adaptive e-learning system by exploiting the traces left by users’ interactions with their learning environment. Depending on the learners’ profile, the system will automatically determine the path and recommend the appropriate courses for them using the ant colony algorithm.

rpose: This study aims to develop and evaluate an adaptive e-learning model tailored to the diverse learning styles of students, particularly within the context of distance learning at STIE Krakatau. The objective is to overcome the limitations of conventional e-learning systems that deliver uniform content to all users, regardless of their individual learning needs. Methodology: The study employed a development-based approach using an engineering model consisting of analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation phases. The adaptive e-learning system was created using multimedia authoring tools and tested in a seminar and training session lasting three hours. Results/Findings: The results demonstrated that the adaptive e-learning system effectively tailored instructional materials to the students' preferred learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic). The system successfully identified students’ learning preferences through a questionnaire and adjusted content presentation accordingly. Ongoing evaluations confirmed that the system functioned as intended and aligned with the designed functionalities. Conclusions: The implementation of an adaptive e-learning model significantly enhances the personalization and relevance of instructional materials, leading to better engagement and potentially improved learning outcomes in distance education. The seminar and training program proved effective in introducing and applying this adaptive model in a higher education setting. Limitations: The study was limited to formative evaluations and alpha testing. Further testing, including beta testing and broader implementation, is needed to determine user acceptance and the system's effectiveness in real classroom settings. Additionally, the current version relies on self-reported learning styles which may affect the accuracy of adaptation. Contributions: This research contributes to the advancement of personalized e-learning technologies by proposing a dual-level adaptation model incorporating both adaptivity (system-driven) and adaptability (user-driven).

Advances in information and communication technologies, especially in Multimedia, Networking and Software Engineering allow the appearance of a new generation of computer-based training systems. Despite its obvious advantages in terms of reduced costs, simplified training programs and flexibility, e-learning was not always the miracle solution. Conceived as a powerful educational tool, e-learning was destined to change the face of learning but unfortunately, this change wasn’t exactly the intended one. The constant interest in researching and testing the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), eLearning and multimedia in the learning process led to educational imperatives about the indicators that can reveal the level of quality for teaching and management of the course. Modern eLearning solutions now recognize the importance of learning as a social process and offer possibilities for collaboration with other learners, for interaction with the learning content and for guidance from teachers, trainers and tutors. Our aim is to analyze the importance of using ICT in a “learning society”. The present paper focuses on the strong potential that ICT provides, in order to develop the learning possibilities among students. The great challenge is to draw up a quality indicators framework which can represent an instrument for teachers on how to organize their online course – including ways of developing the teaching methods.

The wide use of e-technologies represents a great opportunity for underserved segments of the population, especially with the aim of reintegrating excluded individuals back into society through education. This is particularly true for people with different types of disabilities who may have difficulties while attending traditional on-site learning programs that are typically based on printed learning resources. The creation and provision of accessible e-learning contents may therefore become a key factor in enabling people with different access needs to enjoy quality learning experiences and services. Another e-learning challenge is represented by m-learning (which stands for mobile learning), which is emerging as a consequence of mobile terminals diffusion and provides the opportunity to browse didactical materials everywhere, outside places that are traditionally devoted to education. Both such situations share the need to access materials in limited conditions and collide with the growing use of rich media in didactical contents, which are designed to be enjoyed without any restriction. Nowadays, Web-based teaching makes great use of multimedia technologies, ranging from Flash animations to prerecorded video-lectures. Rich media in e-learning can offer significant potential in enhancing the learning environment, through helping to increase access to education, enhance the learning experience and support multiple learning styles. Moreover, they can often be used to improve the structure of Web-based courses. These highly variegated and structured contents may significantly improve the quality and the effectiveness of educational activities for learners. For example, rich media contents allow us to describe complex concepts and process flows. Audio and video elements may be utilized to add a “human touch” to distance-learning courses. Finally, real lectures may be recorded and distributed to integrate or enrich on line materials. A confirmation of the advantages of these approaches can be seen in the exponential growth of video-lecture availability on the net, due to the ease of recording and delivering activities which take place in a traditional classroom. Furthermore, the wide use of assistive technologies for learners with disabilities injects new life into e-learning systems. E-learning allows distance and flexible educational activities, thus helping disabled learners to access resources which would otherwise present significant barriers for them. For instance, students with visual impairments have difficulties in reading traditional visual materials, deaf learners have trouble in following traditional (spoken) lectures, people with motion disabilities have problems in attending on-site programs. As already mentioned, the use of wireless technologies and pervasive computing may really enhance the educational learner experience by offering mobile e-learning services that can be accessed by handheld devices. This new paradigm of educational content distribution maximizes the benefits for learners since it enables users to overcome constraints imposed by the surrounding environment. While certainly helpful for users without disabilities, we believe that the use of newmobile technologies may also become a fundamental tool for impaired learners, since it frees them from sitting in front of a PC. In this way, educational activities can be enjoyed by all the users, without hindrance, thus increasing the social inclusion of non-typical learners. While the provision of fully accessible and portable video-lectures may be extremely useful for students, it is widely recognized that structuring and managing rich media contents for mobile learning services are complex and expensive tasks. Indeed, major difficulties originate from the basic need to provide a textual equivalent for each media resource composing a rich media Learning Object (LO). Moreover, tests need to be carried out to establish whether a given LO is fully accessible to all kinds of learners. Unfortunately, both these tasks are truly time-consuming processes, depending on the type of contents the teacher is writing and on the authoring tool he/she is using. Due to these difficulties, online LOs are often distributed as partially accessible or totally inaccessible content. Bearing this in mind, this thesis aims to discuss the key issues of a system we have developed to deliver accessible, customized or nomadic learning experiences to learners with different access needs and skills. To reduce the risk of excluding users with particular access capabilities, our system exploits Learning Objects (LOs) which are dynamically adapted and transcoded based on the specific needs of non-typical users and on the barriers that they can encounter in the environment. The basic idea is to dynamically adapt contents, by selecting them from a set of media resources packaged in SCORM-compliant LOs and stored in a self-adapting format. The system schedules and orchestrates a set of transcoding processes based on specific learner needs, so as to produce a customized LO that can be fully enjoyed by any (impaired or mobile) student.

Application of a fuzzy controller in adaptive e-learning content used to evaluate student activity

Learner style data is increasingly being incorporated into adaptive eLearning (electronic learning) systems for the development of personalized user models. This practice currently relies heavily on the prior completion of questionnaires by system users. Whilst potentially improving learning outcomes, the completion of questionnaires can be time consuming for users. Recent research indicates that it is possible to detect a user's preference on the Global / Sequential dimension of the FSLSM (Felder-Silverman Learner Style Model) through a user's mouse movement pattern, and other biometric technology including eye tracking and accelerometer technology. In this paper we discuss the potential of eye tracking technology for inference of Visual / Verbal learners. The paper will discuss the results of a study conducted to detect individual user style data based on the Visual / Verbal dimension of the FSLSM.

With the popularity of the Internet, the progressively extend of the wireless network and the enhance of the mobile devices technology. Let everyone can catch the information convenient and unlimited. For this reason, the concept of mobile learning (M-learning) has produced that combines the both meanings of digital information and mobile. In this study, the mobile learning will be as the way of innovation instruction, combine with the characteristics of E-learning and mobile technology together, and use the mobile devices and wireless network which can break the limitation of time and space to learning anywhere and all the time, all in all, it can interactive between teachers and peers instantly This study aims to understand when the mobile learning implements in the school, the planning of executive team, teachers’ instruction design and students’ learning efficiency has changed or not. And it aims to analysis the students who has experimented by mobile learning to evaluate their performance has changed or not. By showing this example can let other schools reference this result to implement the mobile learning experiment and instruction design. 1.When the School is promoting the project of mobile learning, the planning of executive team need to considerate of the integration of three aspects among people, things, and objects to be division of specialization. 2.The mobile learning has the characteristics of mobility, convenience, immediate and the other, so, it not only changes the mode of teacher’s teaching, but also innovatives the methods of instruction . 3.According to the needs of teaching, combined with many varieties of suitable APPs,it makes the teaching become more meaningful. 4.After the students receive the project of mobile learning, altough their learning interests and learning attitude have improved greatly, their learning efficiency has no differences significantly.

Learning and teaching languages in technology-mediated environments : why modes and meaning making matter

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of adopting a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) as primary supplementary material in blended learning classroom on Taiwanese university EFL learners’ English proficiency levels. The study utilized pre- and post-tests of English proficiency, specifically the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) by Educational Testing Service (ETS), learners’ learning experience and learners’ satisfaction. In this study, thirty EFL learners at a private university in Northern Taiwan participated in a year-long paired-group study, first under blended learning environment while adopting a MOOC as primary supplementary material and followed by traditional face-to-face learning, with each learning mode lasting one semester. All participants were computer science and information engineering majors with intermediate English proficiency based on university placement exams. During the first semester (Fall 2013), consists of EFL learning via the blended mode of teaching, which partially incorporates student-centered learning utilizing Coursera education platform. While The second semester (Spring 2014), traditional learning mode the course is comprised of EFL instruction in the traditional way, i.e., teacher-fronted instruction and in-class assignments with textbook materials. Several scholars have suggested that instead of replacing courses at higher education institutions, blended learning with the asynchronous distance learning capabilities of MOOCs could enhance the course content and increase learning proficiency. This paper investigated on such exploration, wherein implementing the online learning experience into English for specific purposes (ESP) course at a private university in Northern Taiwan. This research explained to further understand the implications of blended learning at the tertiary education level in Taiwan. The investigator sought a comprehensive approach to the examination of the blended learning model by utilizing three different sections: students’ learning progress, student’s’ learning satisfaction and students’ learning perspectives. Within-group comparison of the students’ mean scores of the pre- and post-test examinations provided the quantitative assessment of learning progress, while open-ended questionnaire responses and interviews provided the qualitative data comprising the students’ perspective. This research provided a blended learning approach whereby there was a mixture of face-to-face and online learning activities where students would integrate the information and data gathered from both platforms to improve on their learning techniques. The result revealed that the improvement of academic performance and learning satisfaction was attributed to the fact that with the MOOCs assistance, students could study their course materials at their own pace and designated time either at home or in their dormitory rooms. Blending MOOC technology integrates synchronous and asynchronous learning tools that transform and improve the education system and provide room for enforcing learners’ active, autonomous, collaborative, interactive and effective learning techniques.

This study was carried out at a nursing college in Taiwan. The main purpose of the study was to examine affective learning in an English curriculum for English as foreign language (EFL) learners in Taiwan. For affective learning to take place it is crucial that the contents and skills that students acquire are directly or in directly relevant to their life experiences (Hsu, 2002:2). This project therefore that is being discussed in this paper mainly hope to investigate the impact of a meaningful learning environment through modern technology. By building up an interactive learning classroom via multimedia technology, the students' learning motivation and English proficiency were expected to be improved.According to the European perspectives of affective education, learning could be efficient if teaching materials are relevant to students' beliefs, attitudes, and faith of life (Lang, 1998). Hence to develop an affective curriculum of the English language, the project was carried out in a sequence of teaching in a language laboratory within a formal curriculum. The study was undertaken in the periods of 2009-2010. This English curriculum was developed to provide students with new learning experiences. For example, the students could communicate with English native speakers through English learning websites. The approach of case study was adopted as the main methodology (Yin, 1994). Classroom observation, students' workbooks, and a questionnaire survey were employed to investigate their learning outcomes and to validate the findings for generalization (Robson, 2000). 120 Students aged 15 to 16 were the main research group. The findings showed that students' attitudes were positive and it appeared that students were no longer afraid of using English as a communicative tool.This study showed the evidence of the data that the study concluded: the EFL learners can improve their learning interests and proficiency through multimedia learning within an affective environment. Students learnt English not only by using textbooks but also through real experiences of their use of English websites. This study showed that the adoption of modern technology indeed offered students more opportunities to use English.