Adaptive Course Authoring: M y O nline T eacher

/faculty of mathematics and computer science

TU/e eindhoven university of technology

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Adaptive Course Authoring: MMy OOnline TTeacher

Alexandra Cristea

USI intensive course “Adaptive Systems” April-May 2003



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Index

• Adaptive courseware in telecom. framework: • Desires & Problems• Solution: AdaptiveAdaptive Authoring tool for AH course• LAOS & MOT• MOT goals• Implementation• automation• Conclusion & contact info



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Adaptive Courseware in a Telecommunication Framework

• Internet: – widest telecommunication network– enormous source of fast information– strive to use it in education:

• paradigms: life-long learning learning at ones own pace, at ones favorite time and location, etc.

• Web authoring: – ‘by-hand’ into HTML, XML, GIF, JPG, Flash, etc. – w. authoring tools: WCB, Topclass, WebCT,

CyberProf, Instructional Toolkit, Blackboard.



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Desires & Problems• Internet power + ‘human touch’ of classroom: 2

ways: – on-line collaboration or– combination of ITS & AH tech. for user

customization

• Ideally: combination of above – (special focus: pedagogical validity of choices +

comb.)

• Problems: – tools ? – from scratch ?



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Adaptive hypermedia course• AH course = hypermedia system to be used by student to learn

about a subjects via, e.g., a web browser. • basic feature: tries to interpret students’ current knowledge (+

student parameters & characteristics) to adapt itself to his learning needs. UMUM

• Ideally: no need for a human teacher!!• Student can:

– choose topics s/he wants to learn about, ask for more info or solve exercises.

• Depending on student actions (pages visited, results of tests) course transparently adapts to the student’s needs.



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Adaptive telecommunication courses • In adaptive on-line telecommunication-based

courseware, adaptivity & adaptation are reflected in the different presentation ways and orders in which the study material can be delivered to the different students (+ delivery module).

• Simplifying, one can say that the more alternatives there are, the higher the potential adaptation degree will be. However, this creation of multiple alternatives can be extremely time-consuming



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The five level AHS authoring model.

MOTMOT

InterfaceInterfaceAHA!AHA!

Goal & constraints model(~lesson)

Domain model + autom. generation



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Layered approach

MOTMOT



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Goals of MOT

• first main steps of creation of adaptive lesson design systems:

1. tool for manipulating concept maps.

• 2. tool for constructing lessons based on CM.

• 3. method for calculating correspondence weights between concept attributes.



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Initial DB design• Goal: structure that allows:

– constructing complete concept maps (conceptual hierarchical level) & lessons (lesson level), and store results in db.

• system user = teacher: – composes lessons based on concepts from CM; constructs CM, or

uses existing one.

• Db: 2 parts: – concept domain, – course (or lesson hierarchy) – connected by rel. between C-Attribute (concept attribute) and L-

Attribute (lesson attribute).



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Initial ER-diagram



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Extended ER-diagram



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The implemented CM:screenshots



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Transformation from CM into Lesson



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Relatedness relation generation• here, concept attributes = related if common topic

(shared keywords at different attribute levels, e.g.: [text]-[keywords],

[keywords]-[introduction], etc). • relation type: at concept level.

– ‘relatedness relations’ shows existence of rel. between concepts.

– If induced from attribute level: automatically attribute name = semantic label for rsp. relatedness relation.

(label can be later changed by teacher).

• We enhance authoring support & increase automatic course generation without restricting flexibility of final product and teacher decision power.



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Automatic linking

= main issue in automatic adaptation • system expected to support teacher in creating &

evaluating relatedness relations by calculating correspondence weights between pairs of concepts.

• computing links: symbolic, sub-symbolic. • Here: no. of occurrences of keywords of one

concept in attribute contents of the other concept.



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Conclusion

• we presented, in context of tele-communication in education, MOT, a tool for creating adaptive courseware, developed at the Technical University of Eindhoven.

• tele-communication in education contains 2 major parts:– tele-learning – the environment is made to be used via Internet,

from remote sites as well as close sites;

– tele-creation – remote creation via Internet browser.



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Discussion

• teacher & student environment to be used on-line, remotely (tele-creation & tele-learning).

• possible in MOT (but also stand-alone).



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drawbacks stand-alone:• authoring environment:

– multi-modality: created by 1 author alone (or previously via tele-collaboration + exported to student).

= opposed to multiple authors collaborating towards a common / different goals.

• student p.o.v.: – speed. – depending on UM, features adapting to group behavior &

standard behaviorist templates cannot be translated.



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Web Site(s):

• MOT03:MOT03:• http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/~alex/HTML/USI/MOT/http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/~alex/HTML/USI/MOT/• http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/~alex/http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/~alex/• http://cheetah.win.tue.nl/MOT03/http://cheetah.win.tue.nl/MOT03/

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Adaptive Course Authoring: M y O nline T eacher