Adaptive and intelligent technologies for web-based education

AIES:

intelligent technologies applied in Web-based AIES systems were directly adopted from either

the ITS area or the adaptive hypermedia area. As long as Web-based AIES research get more

mature, it will produce original technologies inspired by the Web context. At least one of these

Web-inspired technologies could already be identified (model matching). This section provides a

review of existing technologies grouped by its origin. For each technology we list existing Webbased

AIES and projects, which implements variations of this technology and discuss the ways

to implement it on the Web.

intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) and adaptive hypermedia systems. Most of adaptive and

2.1 ITS technologies in Web-based education

Intelligent tutoring systems is a traditional area of research that investigates problems of

developing AIES [13]. The goal of various ITS is the use the knowledge about the domain, the

student, and about teaching strategies to support flexible individualized learning and tutoring. A

review of existing intelligent tutoring systems performed by the author in 1990 helped to identify

three core ITS technologies: curriculum sequencing, intelligent analysis of student's solutions,

and interactive problem solving support. All these technologies were implemented in numerous

ITS. Since 1990, only one new technology (example-based problem solving support) was added

to the set to classify a functionality that was not covered by the core three. While the proposed

set of ITS technologies could be considered subjective and incomplete, it turned out to be very

useful for classifying existing Web-based AIES. Web-based AIES that use traditional ITS

technologies are usually called Web-based ITS. First Web-based ITS were reported in 1995-

1996 [6; 12; 34; 37]. These systems still constitute a rather small stream inside the ITS area.

2.1.1 Curriculum sequencing

The goal of the

technology) is to provide the student with the most suitable individually planned sequence of

knowledge units to learn and sequence of learning tasks (examples, questions, problems, etc.) to

work with. In other words, it helps the student to find an "optimal path" through the learning

material. The classic example is the BIP system [5]. There are two essentially different kinds of

sequencing: active and passive. Active sequencing implies a

concepts or topics to be mastered). Systems with active sequencing can build the best individual

path to achieve the goal. Passive sequencing (which is also called

technology and does not require an active learning goal. It starts when the user is not able to

solve a problem or answer a question (questions) correctly. Its goal is to offer the user a subset

of available learning material, which can fill the gap in student's knowledge of resolve a

misconception. For active sequencing systems, it makes sense to distinguish systems with fixed

and adjustable learning goal. Most of existing systems can guide their students to the fixed

learning goal - the whole set of domain concepts. A few systems with adjustable learning goal let

a teacher or a student to select a subset of the whole set of concepts as the current learning goal.

In most of ITS systems with sequencing it is possible to distinguish two levels of sequencing:

high and low. High-level sequencing or

next concept, set of concepts, topic, or lesson to be taught. Low-level sequencing or

sequencing

and low level sequencing are often performed by different mechanisms. In many ITS systems

only one of these two mechanisms are intelligent, for example, a lesson is selected by a student,

while learning tasks within this lesson are adaptively selected by the system. Some systems can

only manipulate the order of task of one particular kind: usually problems or questions. In this

case it could be also called problem or question sequencing.

Sequencing is currently the most popular technology in Web-based AIES. Almost all kinds

of sequencing

curriculum sequencing technology (also referred to as instructional planninglearning goal (a subset of domainremediation) is a reactiveknowledge sequencing determines next learning subgoal:taskdetermines next learning task (problem, example, test) within current subgoal. High