Techniques, Technologies and Patents Related to Intelligent Educational Systems - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 10

Learning units are selected, sequenced and pre-
sented to the learner based on the constructed plan,
the selected strategy, relations among knowledge
concepts and learning units, user model informa-
tion and learning unit metadata. To increase teach-
ing effectiveness, plan construction and selection/
sequencing of learning units should not be static,
but updated according to learner performance.
Based on learner interaction with the IES,
learner performance is evaluated, updating the user
model accordingly and altering learning content
presentation. The Pedagogical module should
be able to identify what is wrong/incomplete in
students' responses and any missing knowledge or
misconception causing error(s). Learner-adapted
assistance is offered based on the ability to analyze
final problem solutions and/or individual solution
steps. It is important to dynamically track all
types of learner errors and provide relevant and
meaningful assistance/feedback. In certain cases,
a learner may be able to pose dynamic questions
to the IES, enabling more natural interaction and
support. In case of learner errors, remedial tutor-
ing may be necessary, causing global or local
changes to course/lesson plan (Brusilovsky &
Vassileva, 2003).

that stores variations of educational content and
selects the most suitable one according to the
user model. Ways of implementing it use page
variants , fragment variants or their combination.
Adaptive navigation assists in navigating
educational system's hyperspace by adapting
hyperlinks to user model characteristics. Its goal
is to provide 'optimal paths' through the learning
material (Brusilovsky, 2007), i.e. course/lesson
planning. Usual adaptive navigation techniques
are the following:

• Direct guidance . It shows the next best
learning unit to access.
• Link sorting . The links of a specific page
are sorted according to their relevance.
• Link annotation . According to appropriate-
ness of corresponding pages, links are an-
notated using link colors, icons, etc.
• Link hiding, removal, disabling . Links pre-
sumed to be of low interest are hidden and
presented as simple text, totally removed
or disabled.
• Link generation. It involves creation of
new, non-authored links on a page.

Main Issues

Adaptive Hypermedia Techniques

Several issues involving the pedagogical module
should be tackled. Some of these are the following: Adaptive presentation and adaptive navigation

are techniques coming from AH and used to ac-
complish pedagogical tasks. Adaptive presentation
adapts an educational page's contents to learner
characteristics. A popular technique of adaptive
presentation is known as additional explanations
(Brusilovsky, Kobsa & Vassileva, 1998). In this
method, various pieces of information constitut-
ing learning units are associated with conditions.
When conditions are satisfied, the correspond-
ing information is presented. This means that
some learners will obtain additional information
compared to others. Another popular method of
adaptive presentation concerns the explanation
variants (Brusilovsky, Kobsa & Vassileva, 1998)

• Deciding which tasks will be implemented.
A decision needs to be taken regarding
which pedagogical tasks will be imple-
mented. This depends on corresponding
teaching subject and available/obtainable
knowledge regarding such tasks.
• Pedagogical knowledge acquisition.
Knowledge regarding various pedagogi-
cal tasks needs to be acquired from sources
such as experts (e.g. tutors), literature and
data.
• Maintenance of pedagogical knowledge.
Tools/techniques are needed to manage