An Instructional Framework Supporting Personalized Learning on the Web

1. An Instructional Framework Supporting Personalized Learning on the Web Kyparisia A. Papanikolaou, Maria Grigoriadou {spap, gregor}@di.uoa.gr “Educational and Language Technology” Laboratory http://hermes.di.uoa.gr Dpt. of Informatics and Telecommunications University of Athens, Greece

2. Outline • Personalized learning and Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems • Instructional Framework guiding adaptation: • structuring & developing courseware • generating personalised lessons • organizing assessment • Learner control issues • Empirical study • Conclusions & Further Research

3. Personalized learning Personalizationis especially important in Internet-based distance education where the variety of learners taking the same course is much greater. It needs a certain understanding of: • Learners’ characteristics that have been considered relevant to learning and indices for personalised learning, such as prior knowledge, expertise, learning/cognitive styles, knowledge level. • Learning &Instructional processesunder the specific conditions of Internet-based distance learning.

4. Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems Adaptive Educational Hypermedia (AEH) systems (Brusilovsky, 1999) emerged as an alternative to the traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach in the delivery of courseware. AEH systems combine two opposed approaches to computer assisted learning: the more directive tutor-centered style of traditional Intelligent Tutoring Systems and the flexible learner-centered browsing approach of Hypermedia systems. AEH systems: build & maintain a model of each individual learner, exploit the domain model, under the guidance of a specific instructional approachin order to adapt the content and the navigation to each particular learner (Brusilovsky, 1996).

5. Building a cohesive Instructional Framework: The aim • Designing an instructional framework on which the adaptation of an AEHS could be based should take into consideration two different perspectives: educational and technological. • The educational perspective, in particular, relates to pedagogical decision-making, which concerns: • the structuring and development of courseware and • two different options of the lesson generation process: planning the content (what concepts to focus on) and planning the delivery of instruction (how to present the concepts). • Organizing assessment

6. Instructional Framework: Courseware Development Three levels of difficulty: • guidelines for developing educational material for distance learning; • guidelines for developing educational content for the web; • support system’s adaptive functionality which builds on re-using educational material modules under different instructional conditions and learner profiles.

7. Instructional Framework: Courseware Structure (1/4) Courseware in hypermedia form The framework for building hypermedia structures to model knowledge should be based on sound design principles extrapolated from well-substantiated instructional theory (Jacobson, 1994; Vosniadou, De Corte, Glaser & Mandl,1996).

8. Instructional Framework: Courseware Structure (2/4) We use the notion of learning goals. For each goal a conceptual structure is built in which the fundamental concepts (outcome concepts) of the goal are organized following a specific sequencing reflecting a single type of relationship among them, such as simple-to-complex, procedural sequence, prerequisite sequence (Reigeluth, 1999). E.g. The conceptual structure of the learning goal “Define and built a cache memory”

9. Hypermedia courseware: Courseware Structure (3/4) The educational material provided for the outcome concepts is organized in different levels following taxonomies of learning outcomes that correspond to the skills, which learners should acquire/cultivate, such as Mayer (Factual, Conceptual, Procedural, Metacognitive), Jonassen (initial knowledge acquisition, advanced knowledge acquisition, expertise), Merrill (Remember, Use, Find). E.g. Educational material pages organised in three following levels of performance (Merrill, 1987): 1. The Remember-Comprehension level of performance: speculate on newly introduced ideas 2. The Use level of performance: apply the concept to specific case(s), 3. The Find level of performance: find a new generality, procedure

10. Hypermedia courseware: Courseware development Aiming to support learners with different learning styles to cultivate the corresponding skills and build their own knowledge, on each level of performance multiple types of educational resources, authentic and meaningful tasks are provided E.g. Support learners achieve the following levels of performance: Remember-Comprehension: questions (introductory or self-assessment), theory presentations of the concept, and instances of the concept (real examples or analogies of the concept). Use: hints from the theory, application examples, exercises, activities using computer simulation and/or exploration activities. Find: activities using computer simulation, exploration activities, and case studies.

12. Main screen of INSPIRE (http://hermes.di.uoa.gr) divided in the Navigation area (courseware structure), the Content area (educational material pages), the Toolbar

13. The Navigation Area shows the contents of the first lesson generated for a novice who selected the learning goal “Cache Memory”.

14. Educational material pages as Learning Objects • “Learning objects”: entities, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology-supported learning (LTSC, 2000). • Each educational material page constitutes a complete digital resource that can be re-used to support learning in an instructionally meaningful way • ARIADNErecommendation for educational metadata.

15. Instructional Framework: Planning the content of instruction Selection of the appropriate concepts on which learners should focus according to their knowledge level • We use the notion of learning goals in order to build a structure that provides learners an overview of how all the relevant information fits together: learners have always the option to select and study a learning goal. • The conceptual structure of a learning goal is gradually revealedfollowing its layered structure and learners’ progress: Instruction starts with the broadest, most inclusive and general concepts and proceeds to ever more narrow, less inclusive, and more detailed concepts, until the necessary level of detail has been reached (Reigeluth, 1999)

16. The Navigation Area for a particular learner in two different timeslots. Lesson 1 includes the concepts of the first layer. Lesson 2 includes the concepts of both the first and second layers.

17. Instructional Framework: Planning the delivery of instruction (1/2) Deals with the appropriate selection of educational material for the lesson concepts and sequencing of knowledge modules within the pages following learners’ knowledge level and learning style. Selection of the appropriate educational material pagesfor each outcome concept follows learner’s knowledge level and progress Approach:Although, all the material developed is available to learners for the concepts included in the lesson contents, the system provides navigational advices to learners annotating accordingly the corresponding links in the lessons contents

18. Instructional Framework: Planning the delivery of instruction (2/2) As far as thesequencing of the knowledge modules within the educational material pages of the outcome concepts is concerned, thisfollows learner’s learning style preferences. Learning style model of Honey & Mumford (1992) Approach:

19. Learners with different learning styles view different presentations of the educational material (Use level).

20. Organizing assessment: The aim • Support learners to identify their own progress, the expected performance and study accordingly: questions (introductory or self-assessment), exercises, activities (activities using computer simulation, exploration activities, case studies), projects • Provide the system with the necessary information about learners’ level of performance in order to be able to adapt accordingly: criterion-referenced assessmentbased on assessment tests

21. Learner control • INSPIRE supports several levels of adaptation from purely adaptive to purely adaptable. • Access to the learner model, reflect upon its contents (knowledge level, learning style) and change them in order to guide system’s instructional decisions. • Deactivate adaptation.

22. Empirical Study In the frame of the formative evaluation of INSPIRE we investigated learners’ subjective estimations of the support provided by the system throughout their study by means of the adopted instructional framework.

23. Students’ comments • The adopted conceptual structure (outcome, prerequisites, and related concepts) provides a general overview of the subject matter in an easy to follow way and a comprehensive presentation of the subject that includes all the appropriate material covering possible gaps in their prior knowledge • The educational material (because of its type, variety and structure) is easier to study, to understand, and locate information within it compared to the handouts of the module. • Structure of the educational material of the outcome concepts, i.e. organized in three levels of performance, resembles the way people approach new concepts. • The usage of multiple types of educational material “kept them concentrated” and provided them with the opportunity to “gradually approach the main concepts of the goal through various perspectives, satisfying learners with different studying attitudes” • Although studying in front of a computer screen for an extended period of time is very fatiguing, the idea of structuring a page in multiple areas facilitates study and supports learners in efficiently organizing their study providing them with the initiative to select the educational material to study next • The gradual presentation of concepts is considered useful especially in cases where they are not familiar with the subject. However, one participant commented that this approach prevented him from formulating an overview of the subject matter.

24. Conclusions & Future plans • In INSPIRE, instructional design theories are combined with the learning styles theory aiming to develop an adaptation framework that is educationally effectiveandtechnologically feasible • This framework unifies several processes that mainly affect system’s adaptation, such as: • structuring and developing hypermedia courseware; • guiding lesson generation process; • providing the appropriate navigation and study support to learners; • organizing assessment; • Extend the framework to include multiple instructional approaches: project-based learning, collaborative learning • Extend metadata description to include structure and content

25. Instructional approaches in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia • AST (Specht et al., 1998)strategies used by teachers when teaching different types of concepts in statisticsare adopted to guide learners’ interaction with the system and content development • MANIC (Stern, & Woolf, 2000) is a web-based instructional system, which provides lecture-based material. Each course consists of slides, designed by the instructor of the course, and audio from the lecture. • KBS Hyperbook system (Henze et al., 1999) is a project-based learning environment in which learners work with projects and the system adapts the project resources to their knowledge level and/or learning goals. • In INSPIRE (Papanikolaou et al., 2003), adaptation is based on a comprehensive instructional framework which builds on instructional theories and learning style theory providing the basis for delivering individualized content that accommodate learners’ knowledge level and learning style.

26. Instructional approaches in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia • The idea of developing web-based learning environments that promote learning and individually support learners to accomplish their personal learning goals demands a cohesive instructional background to integrate system’s functionalities that lead to the adaptation and enhance its educational perspective. • Instructional approaches adopted in AEH systems: • defined by the expert-teacher based on his/her teaching experience • based on a theoretical background inspired by instructional/learning theories