Adaptive Educational Hypermedia From generation to generation.pdf

Adaptive Educational Hypermedia: From Generation to Generation Peter Brusilovsky School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA peterb@ SUMMARY Adaptive hypermedia is a relatively new direction of research on the crossroads of hypermedia and user modeling. Adaptive hypermedia systems build a model of the goals, preferences and knowledge of each individual user, and use this model throughout the interaction with the user, in order to adapt to the needs of that user. Educational hypermedia was one of the first application areas for adaptive hypermedia and is currently one of the most popular and well- investigated. The goal of this presentation is to provide a subjective historical overview of research in adaptive educational hypermedia and summarize the current state of the art. KEYWORDS: adaptive hypermedia, Web-based Education, Intelligent Tutoring System INTRODUCTION Adaptive hypermedia is an alternative to the traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach in the development of hypermedia systems. Adaptive hypermedia systems build a model of the goals, preferences and knowledge of each individual user, and use this model throughout the interaction with the user, in order to adapt to the needs of that user (Brusilovsky, 1996). For example, a student in an adaptive educational hypermedia system will be given a presentation that is adapted specifically to his or her knowledge of the subject (De Bra Calvi, 1998), and a suggested set of the most relevant links to proceed further (Brusilovsky, Eklund Schwarz, 1998). An adaptive electronic encyclopedia will personalize the content of an article to augment the users existing knowledge and interests (Milosavljevic, 1997). A virtual museum will adapt the presentation of every visited object to the users individual path through the museum (Oberlander et al., 1998). AH systems can be useful in any application area where a hypermedia system is expected to be used by people with different goals