Adapting exercise selection to performance, effort and self-esteem

Abstract

Adapting to learner characteristics is essential when selecting exercises for learners in an intelligent tutoring system. This paper investigates how humans adapt next exercise selection (in particular difficulty level) to learner personality, invested mental effort, and performance to inspire an adaptive exercise selection algorithm. First, the paper describes the investigations to produce validated materials for the main studies, namely the creation and validation of self-esteem personality stories, mental effort statements, and mathematical exercises with varying levels of difficulty. Next, through empirical studies, we investigate the impact on exercise selection of learner's self-esteem (low versus high self-esteem) and effort (minimal, little, moderate, much, and all possible effort). Three studies investigate this for learners who had different performances on a previous exercise: just passing, just failing, and performed well. Participants considered a fictional learner with a certain performance, self-esteem and effort, and selected the difficulty level of the next mathematical exercise. We found that self-esteem, mental effort, and performance all impacted the difficulty level of the exercises selected for learners. Finally, using the results from the studies, we propose an algorithm that selects exercises with varying difficulty levels adapted to learner characteristics.

A methodology for creating and validating psychological stories for conveying and measuring psychological traits

“…(2013)RecSysFFM (O)Select an item set Okpo et al. (2016a, b, 2018)ITSSelf-esteemSelect exercise difficultyObtaining Alhathli et al. (2016, 2017)ITSFFMJudge learning materials Smith and Masthoff (2018)eHealthFFMJudge emotional support messages Smith et al.…”

“…2Personality is only one of many user characteristics that may impact user behaviour (Okpo et al. 2018). Other user characteristics include cognitive and physical ability (Loitsch et al.…”

Adapting Learning Activity Selection to Emotional Stability and Competence

“…Personality; Big 5 Robison et al, 2010;Nunes and Hu, 2012;Alhathli et al, 2016Alhathli et al, , 2018bDennis et al, 2016 Psychological aspects Self-efficacy Beal and Lee, 2005a;Mcquiggan et al, 2008 Mental effort Salden et al, 2006;Okpo et al, 2018 Motivation Beal and Lee, 2005a;Cocea and Weibelzahl, 2006 Affective state and mood Beal and Lee, 2005b;Forbes-Riley et al, 2008;Graesser et al, 2008;Odo et al, 2018 Behavior and performance Learner competence Mitrović et al, 1996;Davidovic et al, 2003;Tsiriga and Virvou, 2004;Cheng et al, 2008;Corbalan et al, 2008 Problem solving skills Melis et al, 2001;Pholo and Ngwira, 2013 Help seeking behavior and self-regulated learning Koutsojannis et al, 2001;Azevedo, 2005 Learner progress Brusilovsky et al, 1996;Revilla et al, 2008;Trotman and Handley, 2008;Verdú et al, 2012 Cognition Cognitive style Triantafillou et al, 2004;Graesser et al, 2007;Mampadi et al, 2011;Lo et al, 2012;Alhathli et al, 2018a Knowledge state and prior knowledge Shute, 1995;Ray and Belden, 2007;Kelly, 2008;Petrovica, 2013 Learning style Magoulas et al, 2003;Sun and Cheng, 2007;…”

“…Learning is influenced by both characteristics of the learner (such as expertise, abilities, attitudes, performance, mental effort, personality) and characteristics of the learning activity (LA) (such as LA complexity, LA type, amount of learner support provided) (Lawless and Brown, 1997;Zimmerman, 2002;Salden et al, 2006;Okpo et al, 2018).…”

Adapting Performance And Emotional Support Feedback To Cultural Differences

“…Their work investigated how personalised feedback on performance may be given to a learner by a conversational agent, and how learner motivation can be maintained by incorporating the most effective emotional support statements in the feedback. Okpo et al [28] investigated the adaptation of exercise selection to learner self-esteem, effort, and performance. Grawemeyer et al [12] developed an affective state reasoner to adapt different types of feedback to a learner's affective state during their interaction with a learning environment.…”