A user modeling system for adaptive learning

Abstract

Adaptive learning is a research branch of e-learning, which supports personalization in study. Thus, adaptive learning system has ability to change its action to provide learning content and pedagogic environment/method for every student in accordance with her/his individual characteristics such as knowledge, learning styles, interests, etc. Student's characteristics are structured as so-called user model and the so-called user modeling system is responsible for managing such user model. User modeling system is the heart of adaptive learning. This research proposes a novel user modeling system named Zebra which manipulates students' characteristics in the effective way. Moreover, Zebra provides powerful inference mechanism for reasoning out new information about students in order to support adaptive learning in the best way. Zebra is implemented as computer software and so, the purpose of this paper is to introduce Zebra - a novel and powerful user modeling system.