Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
distance education or e-learning. One of the reasons is due to the significant price
drop of personal computers in recent years; the Internet and multimedia has
penetrated into most households. Moreover, most students prefer to learn from
an interactive environment through a self-paced style. Under the Web-based
learning model, students can learn at anytime and anywhere because they are
not required to go to school on schedule. Meanwhile universities also enjoy the
economic benefit due to the large student base that can share the development
cost of course materials and other operational expenses. Gradually, more and
more universities are following this similar way to providing online education.
Presently, students can easily access online course material at anytime
or anywhere. However, the diversity of student characteristics causes a
significant issue. The students may have different linguistic, cultural, and
academic backgrounds. It is difficult for the conventional e-course to meet
student expectations. To address this issue, a personalized learning environ-
ment has been promoted recently. In this research area, some major research
works [20,28,47] attempted to develop a learning system, taking into account
psychological factors. At the same time, other research works [5,6,41,48] that
focused on providing personalized learning facilities have also been devel-
oped. The key to a successful personalized learning environment for all
students is to place students' needs into consideration. A reported survey [7]
of student expectations has shown that students expect:
•
Staff and instructors to be available at flexible times
•
Good response times for enquiries and marking
•
Easily accessible help with technology
•
Easily navigated Web sites
•
Course content based on relevant real-world situations
•
Facilitation of collaboration in tasks
Clearly, students prefer instant feedback and more guidance rather than
being totally free of learning directions. Providing a course syllabus or study
guide is an effective learning strategy for online students [36]. Cordova and
Lepper [18] evaluated the impact on personalization with respect to stimu-
lating intrinsic motivation and learning in a computer-based educational
environment. The finding was that students studying with the personalized
contexts have better motivation, a higher degree of involvement and learned
more than other students with traditional learning materials.
17.2 E-Learning Modeling
In response to the different needs and characteristics of a growing number
of e-learning users, personalized e-learning systems have been exploited.
