Adaptive Interfaces and Agents

The adaptation of hypermedia can be carried out at three levels, namely the content, navigation and presentation level. The presentation level is the least studied of the three, apparently because it refers to user properties that are not easy to model. In this paper, we present a new approach to modeling cognitive abilities that relies on basic mental functionalities. We describe the Cognitive User Modeling for Adaptive Presentation of Hyper-Documents (CUMAPH) environment, which mainly provides an authoring tool and an adaptation engine. The aim of this environment is to adapt a hyper-document presentation by selecting the elements that best fit the user cognitive profile. Its architecture is based on four main components: a cognitive user model, a hyper-document builder, an adaptation engine and a generic style sheet. To validate our approach, we designed an innovative protocol and conducted an experimental study involving 39 students. The first results show that an adaptive presentation can significantly increase the efficiency of hypermedia presentations.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Modeling Elementary Cognitive Abilities for Adaptive Hypermedia Presentation

Tarpin-Bernard

Habieb-Mammar

2005

“…We then analysed what affect on the behaviour and the attitude of the users feedback generated by TADV might have had. This relates to the argument in Jameson (2006) that experimenters should examine various conditions and be open to unexpected discoveries that bring some understanding of what the effect of adaptation could be. In this vein, it was very helpful to have a variety of data at hand (from logs, questionnaire, interviews, pre-and post-test) which enabled us to examine aspects we had not considered during the design stage.…”

Section: Discussion: Lessons Learnt From the Tadv Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Empirical evaluations are crucial to examine whether personalisation features increase the users' experience (Chin 2001;Gena and Weibelzahl 2007;Jameson 2006;Weibelzahl 2005), and have been receiving increasing attention recently. In this line, the TADV evaluation offers a case study that: (a) illustrates an adequate approach to examine benefits of personalisation in distance learning involving both instructors and learners; (b) identifies some important issues to be taken into account in experimental studies with online learning systems.…”

Section: Comparison With Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive feedback generation to support teachers in web-based distance education

Kosba

Dimitrova

Boyle

2007

This work examines the application of user-adapted technologies to address problems experienced in web-based distance education. We have proposed an approach to support distance learning instructors by offering advice that points at problems faced by students and suggests possible activities to address these problems. The paper describes an original feedback generation framework which utilises student, group and class models derived from tracking data in web course management systems, and follows a taxonomy of feedback categories to recognise situations that are brought to the instructors' attention. The results of an empirical study in an online learning course point at benefits of the generated feedback to both instructors and students. Teachers can get a better understanding of their students by knowing what problems they may be facing, when they are behind or ahead of their peers, who can help them and how, and what roles can be assigned in discussion forums. This, in turn, can have a positive effect on students who can receive feedback tailored to their needs and problems. The evaluation study points at issues that can be related in general to planning empirical evaluations of user-adapted systems in realistic web-based learning settings.

“…Jameson (2008) defines predictability in this context to represent the extent to which users can predict the effects of their actions. We specialize the definition for the needs of applying this criterion to this layer, and constrain it specifically to the system's interpretation of user actions.…”

Section: Interpretation Of the Collected Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Layered evaluation of interactive adaptive systems: framework and formative methods

Paramythis

Weibelzahl

Masthoff

2010

114

The evaluation of interactive adaptive systems has long been acknowledged to be a complicated and demanding endeavour. Some promising approaches in the recent past have attempted tackling the problem of evaluating adaptivity by "decomposing" and evaluating it in a "piece-wise" manner. Separating the evaluation of different aspects can help to identify problems in the adaptation process. This paper presents a framework that can be used to guide the "layered" evaluation of adaptive systems, and a set of formative methods that have been tailored or specially developed for the evaluation of adaptivity. The proposed framework unifies previous approaches in the literature and has already been used, in various guises, in recent research work. The presented methods are related to the layers in the framework and the stages in the development lifecycle of interactive systems. The paper also discusses practical issues surrounding the employment of the above, and provides a brief overview of complementary and alternative approaches in the literature.