A review of adaptation approaches in adaptive learning systems and a discussion of their implementation in modern e-learning.

1. Adaptive Learning Systems
Towards “Adaptation Engine”
Peter Brusilovsky
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh, USA

2. Caveat Emptor

3. Overview
• Adaptation Technologies (what can be
adapted and how)
– Origins
– Review
– Place in the “Big Picture”
• How it could be implemented – “adaptation
engine”

4. Key Aspects of Adaptive Systems
• Adapting to what?
– User knowledge
– User interests
– User individual traits
• What can be adapted?
– Adaptive sequencing of educational tasks
– Adaptive content presentation
– Adaptive ordering of search results

5. Technologies: The Origins
• Pre-Web AES Technologies
– ITS Technologies
– AH Technologies
• Web Technologies
• Post-Web Technologies
• Brusilovsky, P. and Peylo, C. (2003) Adaptive and intelligent Web-based educational systems.
International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 13 (2-4), 159-172.

6. Pre-Web Technologies
Adaptive Hypermedia Systems Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Adaptive
Hypermedia
Intelligent
Tutoring
Adaptive Presentation
Adaptive Navigation Support
Curriculum Sequencing
Problem Solving Support
Intelligent Solution Analysis

7. Pre-Web Technologies
• Intelligent Tutoring Systems
– course sequencing
– intelligent analysis of problem solutions
– interactive problem solving support
– example-based problem solving
• Adaptive Hypermedia Systems
– adaptive presentation
– adaptive navigation support

8. How to Model User Knowledge
• Domain model
– The whole body of domain knowledge is
decomposed into set of smaller knowledge
componens (skills, concepts, topics, etc)
• Student model
– Overlay model
• Student knowledge is measured independently for
each knowledge unit
– Misconceptions (bugs)

9. Simple overlay model
Concept 1
Concept 2
Concept 3
Concept 4
no
Concept 5
yes
Concept N
no
no
yes
yes

10. Simple overlay model
Concept 1
Concept 2
Concept 3
Concept 4
no
Concept 5
yes
Concept N
no
no
yes
yes

11. Weighted overlay model
Concept 1
Concept 2
Concept 3
Concept 4
Concept 5
10
Concept N
3
0
2
7
4

12. Bug models
Concept
A
Concept
B
Concept
C
• Each concept/skill has a set of associated
bugs/misconceptions and sub-optimal skills
• There are help/hint/remediation messages for
bugs

13. Course Sequencing
• Oldest ITS technology
– SCHOLAR, BIP, GCAI...
• Goal: individualized
“best” sequence of
educational activities
– information to read
– examples to explore
– problems to solve ...
• Curriculum sequencing,
instructional planning, ...

14. ELM-ART: Exercise Sequencing
Weber, G. and Brusilovsky, P. (2001) ELM-ART: An adaptive
versatile system for Web-based instruction. International
Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 12 (4), 351-384.

15. Beyond Sequencing: Generation
Kumar, A. (2005) Generation of problems, answers, grade
and feedback - case study of a fully automated tutor. ACM
Journal on Educational Resources in Computing 5 (3),
Article No. 3.

16. Adaptive Problem Solving Support
• The core of Intelligent Tutoring Systems
• From diagnosis to problem solving support
• Low-interactive support
– intelligent analysis of problem solutions
• Highly-interactive support
– interactive problem solving support

17. Intelligent analysis of problem
solutions
• Intelligent analysis of problem solutions
• Support: Identifying misconceptions (bug
model) and broken constraints (CM)
• Provides feedback adapted to the user model:
remediation, positive help
• Low interactivity: Works after the (partial)
solution is completed
• Examples: PROUST, ELM-ART, SQL-Tutor

18. Example: ELM-ART

19. Interactive Problem Solving
Support
• Classic System: Lisp-Tutor
• The “ultimate goal” of many ITS developers
• Several kinds of adaptive feedback on every step
of problem solving
– Coach-style intervention
– Highlight wrong step
– What is wrong
– What is the correct step
– Several levels of help by request

20. Example: WADEIn
http://adapt2.sis.pitt.edu/cbum/
Brusilovsky, P. and Loboda, T. D. (2006) WADEIn II: A case for adaptive
explanatory visualization. In: M. Goldweber and P. Salomoni (eds.) Proceedings
of 11th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science
Education, ITiCSE'2006, Bologna, Italy, June 26-28, 2006, ACM Press, pp. 48-52.

21. Example-Based Technologies
• While focused on problem solving, ITS research
developed several adaptive example-based learning
approaches
• Example-based problem solving support
– Adaptively suggesting relevant examples for given
problem and student state of knowledge (ELM-ART)
• Adaptive worked out examples
– Steps could be presented with different level of details
(fading with knowledge growth)
– Example steps could be replaced with problem steps

22. Adaptive hypermedia
• Hypermedia systems = Pages + Links
• Adaptive presentation
– content adaptation
• Adaptive navigation support
– link adaptation
• Could be considered as “soft” sequencing
– Helping the user to get to the right content

23. Adaptive navigation support
• What could be done with links to provide
personalized guidance?
• Direct guidance
• Restricting access
– Removing, disabling, hiding
• Link Ranking
• Link Annotation
• Link Generation
– Similarity-based, interest-based

24. Adaptive Annotation: InterBook
1. Concept role
2. Current concept state
3. Current section state
4. Linked sections state
4
3
2
1
√
InterBook system

25. Adaptive Annotation: NavEx
Yudelson, M. and Brusilovsky, P. (2005) NavEx: Providing Navigation Support for Adaptive Browsing of Annotated Code
Examples. In: C.-K. Looi, G. McCalla, B. Bredeweg and J. Breuker (eds.) Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Artificial
Intelligence in Education, AI-Ed'2005, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 18-22, 2005, IOS Press, pp. 710-717

26. Adaptive Text Presentation
in PUSH (stretchtext)
Höök, K., Karlgren, J., Wærn, A., Dahlbäck, N., Jansson, C. G.,
Karlgren, K., and Lemaire, B. (1996) A glass box approach to adaptive
hypermedia. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 6 (2-3),
157-184.

27. Adaptive Animation in WADEIn

28. Adapting to Individual Traits
• Source of knowledge
– educational psychology research on individual
differences
• Known as cognitive or learning styles
– Field dependence, wholist/serialist (Pask)
– Kolb, VARK, Felder-Silverman classifiers

29. Style-Adaptive Hypermedia
• Different content for different style
– Pictures for visually oriented
– Little success, a lot of negative evidence
• Better idea: different interface
organization and navigation tools for
different styles
– Adding/removing maps, advanced organizers,
etc.

30. Example: AES-CS
Interface for field-independent learners
Triantafillou, E., Pomportis, A., and Demetriadis, S. (2003) The design
and the formative evaluation of an adaptive educational system based on
cognitive styles. Computers and Education, 87-103.

31. Example: AES-CS
Interface for field-dependent learners

32. Web Impact: Early Migration
• Intelligent Tutoring Systems (since 1970)
– CALAT (CAIRNE, NTT)
– PAT-ONLINE (PAT, Carnegie Mellon)
• Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (since 1990)
– AHA (Adaptive Hypertext Course, Eindhoven)
– KBS-HyperBook (KB Hypertext, Hannover)
• ITS and AHS
– ELM-ART (ELM-PE, Trier, ISIS-Tutor, MSU)

33. Technology Fusion
Adaptive Web Adaptive Educational
Systems
Adaptive E-Learning

34. Web Age Technologies
Information Retrieval
Adaptive Hypermedia Systems Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Adaptive
Hypermedia
Adaptive
Information
Filtering
Intelligent
Monitoring
Intelligent
Collaborative
Learning
Intelligent
Tutoring
Machine Learning,
Data Mining
CSCL

35. Native Web Technologies
• Availability of logs
– Log-mining
– Intelligent class monitoring
– Class progress visualization
• One system, many users - group adaptation!
– Adaptive collaboration support
• Web is a large information resource - helping to
find relevant open corpus information
– Adaptive content recommendation

36. Adaptive Collaboration Support
• Peer help / peer finding
• Collaborative group formation
• Group collaboration support
– Collaborative work support
– Forum discussion support
• Awareness support

37. Educational Recommenders
• Motivated by research on IR and
Recommender Systems
• Content based recommender systems
• Collaborative recommender systems
• Social recommender systems (based on
social links)
• Hybrid Recommenders

38. Modeling User Interests
• Concept-level modeling
– Same domain models as in knowledge
modeling, but the overlay models level of
interests, not level of knowledge
• Keyword-level modeling
– Uses a long list of keywords (terms) in place of
domain model
– User interests are modeled as weigthed vector
or terms
– Originated from adaptive filtering/search area

39. How it Fits Together?

40. Popular View on Adaptive
Learning: Big PIcture
• A learning course (system) is an organized
collection of learning content (objects)
• Students learn by moving from one content
item to another interacting with each one
depending on item nature (watch a movie,
answer a quiz)
• Results are stored and used for learner
modeling and analytics

41. A View on Adaptive Learning
• Adaptive learning could
be achieved by
adaptively selecting the
next best content
• The job of adaptation
engine is to use data
about student (obtained
before and during the
course) to suggest next
content item

42. What is (Partially) Correct
• This is a valuable adaptation context, exactly the
place to use adaptive sequencing
• Sequencing is an effective adaptation approach,
comes in several well-explored brands:
– Mastery learning
– Remedial sequencing
– Proactive sequencing
• But – any personalized guidance technology that
can guide the learner to the most appropriate content
could be used in this context and there are other
ways to do it
– Adaptive navigation support
– Recommendation with a ranked list

43. Lessons Learned I
• Approaches that combine system-driven
adaptation with user ability to select content
work better for “mature” learners that purely
system-driven “Deus ex machina” approaches
while sequencing is critical for younger kids
– If you want to apply sequencing, consider other
guidance approaches as well
• There are other approaches to support self-regulated
learning related to adaptation and
they work really well – open learner model!
– If you build learner model, make it open!
• Thanks, David, for explaining why we need it!

44. Exercise area
QuizGuide = OLM + ANS
List of annotated
links to all exercises
available for a
student in the
current course
grouped into topics

45. •
Concept-based vs Topic-based ANS
Topic-based
Topic-based+Concept-Based

46. Lessons Learned II
• The largest impact is achieved by
personalized guidance to complex activities
(i.e., problems), while juggling static
content has low impact
– If you focus on sequencing, make sure you
have advanced learning content
• Selection of activities based on learning
style is not (yet) an efficient approach,
– If you want to build style-based adaptation, use
more complex approaches

47. What is Usually Missed
• Learning objects are not necessary static files
• Most efficient learning “content” is interactive (might
not even look like content, stored in files, copied)
– Interactive simulations
– Worked-out examples
– Problems
• This is exactly the place to apply “within-content”
adaptation
– All kind of problem-solving support “tutors”
– All kinds of adaptive presentation such as adaptive
animation and examples
• There is a place for adaptation even beyond content
– Adaptive collaboration support

48. Lessons Learned III
• Within-content adaptation is important
– Adaptive presentation significantly increases comprehension
while decreasing learning time
– Provides vital problem-solving support where students needs
most help
– Engages learners in interactive activities
• There is no “single place” for adaptation
– Every type of content might use different approaches for
adaptation and use own appropriate “engine”
– Different engines might need different information about
learner and on different granularity levels
• ITS is a great technology for content-level adaptation,
but existing monolithic ITS should be re-engineered to
fit the traditional learning architectures

49. Requirements for AL architecture
• Support adaptation on several levels
– Adaptive guidance (item to item)
– Within-item adaptation
– Adaptation beyond “items”, i.e., collaboration
• Data for learner modeling should be
collected from all kinds of interactions
• Learner model produced from this data
should be available for all components

50. ADAPT2 Architecture
Portal
Activity
Server
Student Modeling Server
Value-added
Service
Brusilovsky, P. (2004) KnowledgeTree: A distributed architecture for adaptive e-learning. In: Proceedings of
13th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2004, New York, NY, 17-22 May, 2004, ACM Press,

51. User modeling server
CUMULATE
Event Storage
Inferenced UM
Event reports
UM requests
Application External
Inference Agent
Internal
Inference Agent
UM updates
Event requests

52. All Pieces in Place?

53. Next Challenges: Architecture
• Post-Web Learning technologies are more
diverse, but we need to find how to fit them
into the architecture
• Educational games
• Virtual and Augmenter Reality
• Mobile learning
• “Real World” learning

54. Next Challenges: Adaptation
• Most of existing adaptation technologies are
based on knowledge engineering
– Cognitive analysis
– Metadata indexing
• Works well, but expensive
• How we could use large volume of data
collected from many students to deliver and
improve adaptation?

55. Social Personalization for AES
• Starting with technologies based on shallow
processing of social data
• Social navigation support for open corpus
resources
– Knowledge Sea II
• Open Social Student Modeling with Social
guidance
– Progressor
– MasteryGrids

56. Knowledge Sea II
Farzan, R. and Brusilovsky, P. (2005) Social navigation support through annotation-based group modeling. In: L. Ardissono,
P. Brna and A. Mitrovic (eds.) Proceedings of 10th International User Modeling Conference, Berlin, July 24-29, 2005, Springer
Verlag, pp. 463-472, also available at http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/~peterb/papers/FarzanBrusilovskyUM05.pdf.

57. Progressor
Hsiao, I. H., Bakalov, F., Brusilovsky, P., and König-Ries, B. (2013) Progressor: social navigation support through open
social student modeling. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 19 (2), 112-131.

58. MasteryGrids
Loboda, T., Guerra, J., Hosseini, R., and Brusilovsky, P. (2014) Mastery Grids: An Open Source Social Educational
Progress Visualization. In: S. de Freitas, C. Rensing, P. J. Muñoz Merino and T. Ley (eds.) Proceedings of 9th European
Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2014), Graz, Austria, September 16-19, 2014.

59. The Challenge for Social
Personalization
• Use large volume of learner community data to
build more advanced adaptation approaches to
replace or enhance “content-based” adaptation
• Example: Finding latent groups, meta-adaptation