Student modelling in adaptive e-learning systems

TLDR

E‑learning platforms typically deliver uniform web‑based courses without adaptation, yet the one‑size‑fits‑all model fails to meet individual learner needs, making adaptive systems a key challenge. The study aims to deliver content at the right time by automatically determining each student’s knowledge level, tracking usage, and arranging content for optimal learning outcomes. The proposed system initializes a student model at registration, tracks learning activities and test scores to update knowledge levels, and integrates this model with a domain model to adapt course content, implemented on an Intro to Java course via LearnSquare. Testing yielded positive feedback, particularly praising the system’s adaptive capability.

Abstract

Most e-Learning systems provide web-based learning so that students can access the same online courses via the Internet without adaptation, based on each student's profile and behavior. In an e-Learning system, one size does not fit all. Therefore, it is a challenge to make e-Learning systems that are suitably “adaptive”. The aim of adaptive e-Learning is to provide the students the appropriate content at the right time, means that the system is able to determine the knowledge level, keep track of usage, and arrange content automatically for each student for the best learning result. This study presents a proposed system which includes major adaptive features based on a student model. The proposed system is able to initialize the student model for determining the knowledge level of a student when the student registers for the course. After a student starts learning the lessons and doing many activities, the system can track information of the student until he/she takes a test. The student’s knowledge level, based on the test scores, is updated into the system for use in the adaptation process, which combines the student model with the domain model in order to deliver suitable course contents to the students. In this study, the proposed adaptive e-Learning system is implemented on an “Introduction to Java Programming Language” course, using LearnSquare software. After the system was tested, the results showed positive feedback towards the proposed system, especially in its adaptive capability.