This paper presents an in-depth analysis of a nonconventional topic-based personalization approach for adaptive educational systems (AES) that we have explored for a number of years in the context of university programming courses. With this approach both student modeling and adaptation are based on coarse-grained knowledge units that we called topics. Our motivation for the topic-based personalization was to enhance AES transparency for both teachers and students by utilizing typical topic-based course structures as the foundation for designing all aspects of an AES from the domain model to the end-user interface. We illustrate the details of the topic-based personalization technology, with the help of the Web-based educational service QuizGuide – the first system to implement it. QuizGuide applies the topic-based personalization to guide students to the right learning material in the context of an undergraduate C programming course. While having a number of architectural and practical advantages, the suggested coarse-grained personalization approach deviates from the common practices toward knowledge modeling in AES. Therefore, we believed, that several aspects of QuizGuide required a detailed evaluation – from modeling accuracy to the effectiveness of adaptation. How can one evaluate the soundness of a user modeling (UM) approach, rather than a specific personalized system? The paper discusses how this new student modeling approach can be evaluated, and presents our attempts to evaluate it from multiple different prospects. The evaluation of QuizGuide across several consecutive semesters demonstrates that, although topics do not always support precise UM, they can provide a basis for successful personalization in AESs.
%0 Journal Article
%1 citeulike:14103059
%A Sosnovsky, Sergey
%A Brusilovsky, Peter
%B User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction
%D 2015
%I Springer Netherlands
%K adaptive-hypermedia adaptive-navigation-support open-student-model student-modeling
%N 4
%P 371--424
%R 10.1007/s11257-015-9164-4
%T Evaluation of topic-based adaptation and student modeling in QuizGuide
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11257-015-9164-4
%V 25
%X This paper presents an in-depth analysis of a nonconventional topic-based personalization approach for adaptive educational systems (AES) that we have explored for a number of years in the context of university programming courses. With this approach both student modeling and adaptation are based on coarse-grained knowledge units that we called topics. Our motivation for the topic-based personalization was to enhance AES transparency for both teachers and students by utilizing typical topic-based course structures as the foundation for designing all aspects of an AES from the domain model to the end-user interface. We illustrate the details of the topic-based personalization technology, with the help of the Web-based educational service QuizGuide – the first system to implement it. QuizGuide applies the topic-based personalization to guide students to the right learning material in the context of an undergraduate C programming course. While having a number of architectural and practical advantages, the suggested coarse-grained personalization approach deviates from the common practices toward knowledge modeling in AES. Therefore, we believed, that several aspects of QuizGuide required a detailed evaluation – from modeling accuracy to the effectiveness of adaptation. How can one evaluate the soundness of a user modeling (UM) approach, rather than a specific personalized system? The paper discusses how this new student modeling approach can be evaluated, and presents our attempts to evaluate it from multiple different prospects. The evaluation of QuizGuide across several consecutive semesters demonstrates that, although topics do not always support precise UM, they can provide a basis for successful personalization in AESs.
@article{citeulike:14103059,
abstract = {{This paper presents an in-depth analysis of a nonconventional topic-based personalization approach for adaptive educational systems (AES) that we have explored for a number of years in the context of university programming courses. With this approach both student modeling and adaptation are based on coarse-grained knowledge units that we called topics. Our motivation for the topic-based personalization was to enhance AES transparency for both teachers and students by utilizing typical topic-based course structures as the foundation for designing all aspects of an AES from the domain model to the end-user interface. We illustrate the details of the topic-based personalization technology, with the help of the Web-based educational service QuizGuide – the first system to implement it. QuizGuide applies the topic-based personalization to guide students to the right learning material in the context of an undergraduate C programming course. While having a number of architectural and practical advantages, the suggested coarse-grained personalization approach deviates from the common practices toward knowledge modeling in AES. Therefore, we believed, that several aspects of QuizGuide required a detailed evaluation – from modeling accuracy to the effectiveness of adaptation. How can one evaluate the soundness of a user modeling (UM) approach, rather than a specific personalized system? The paper discusses how this new student modeling approach can be evaluated, and presents our attempts to evaluate it from multiple different prospects. The evaluation of QuizGuide across several consecutive semesters demonstrates that, although topics do not always support precise UM, they can provide a basis for successful personalization in AESs.}},
added-at = {2017-11-15T17:02:25.000+0100},
author = {Sosnovsky, Sergey and Brusilovsky, Peter},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/29fb3f1b727bd28e294ecb06dab6a0be4/brusilovsky},
booktitle = {User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction},
citeulike-article-id = {14103059},
citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11257-015-9164-4},
citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11257-015-9164-4},
doi = {10.1007/s11257-015-9164-4},
interhash = {8f8f9747da69edd439d3d5e19eb51292},
intrahash = {9fb3f1b727bd28e294ecb06dab6a0be4},
keywords = {adaptive-hypermedia adaptive-navigation-support open-student-model student-modeling},
number = 4,
pages = {371--424},
posted-at = {2016-07-27 15:39:25},
priority = {0},
publisher = {Springer Netherlands},
timestamp = {2021-04-16T21:49:57.000+0200},
title = {{Evaluation of topic-based adaptation and student modeling in QuizGuide}},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11257-015-9164-4},
volume = 25,
year = 2015
}