2003-08-29

Pluggable user models for adaptive hypermedia in education



Abstract from http://www.ht03.org/papers/
"Most adaptive hypermedia systems used in education implement a single user
model Ğ inevitably originally designed for a specific set of circumstances. In
this paper we describe an architecture that makes use of XML pipelines to
facilitates the implementation of different user models"


* education on www is all too often a "distributed photocopier machine"
-> adaptive hypermedia can help

* user models are imperfect
-> user models should be plugins
-> can be done as filters in the XML pipeline (series of transformations of
XML)

[i'm not sure this works. the user model has to hold the user map and all that
kind of stuff, but the implicature in a conversation can *utterly* change the
speech act that moves you round the territory. it's not just a perturbation,
which is essentially what a pipeline models. maybe that doesn't matter here
because it's very much a trail - the lesson - and not so much navigation.]


system is called "WHURLE"

divided into chunks: atomic unit of content, conceptually self-contained
(defined in WCML), written by subject specialists -- chunks are tagged with the
user model

a lesson plan creates a docuverse

XInclude used to retrieve chunks as required. hypermedia pathway through
available chunks.

created by teachers.

pipeline:
visualisation of the content, link overlay (navigational are automatic, and
authored links), skin overlay


future work:
- user models that aren't *just* about ability level (beginner, learner,
expert) in a particular lesson/domain

there are 60 different styles of learning preferences, and they want to model
some of these, the ones appropriate to learning in nottingham [oooh, i want a
reference for that 60 figure]

didn't hear the answer about learning styles very well, but...
felder & liverman models of learning style categories/models? there are various
types, and you can match chunks to different model categories and adapt based
on that.