An Inquiry-led Personalised Navigation System (IPNS) using multi-dimensional linkbases

The simplicity of the hypertext model behind the World Wide Web is a factor in its success, but this simplicity brings limitations. One of these limitations is embedding links in documents. Open Hypermedia addresses this by instead storing them in separate link databases. Meanwhile, the Adaptive Hypermedia approach seeks to enhance a user’s experience by inserting personalised additional content and links on the web page. However, these techniques do not offer the user any control over the adaptation. In this paper, we propose the concept of a multi-dimensional linkbase for adaptive links presentation. Links are created and stored in a single, multi-dimensional, linkbase that provides presentation links based on the user’s preferences and profile. We present a web-based system (IPNS) that implements this multi-dimensional concept for controlling its personalisation of hyperlinks. We give the results of our evaluation, which confirm that user-controlled adaptation is a satisfactory approach to providing users with control over personalization, and can alleviate the link overload problem

Ontology-based personalisation of e-learning resources for disabled students

Students with disabilities are often expected to use e-learning systems to access learning materials but most systems do not provide appropriate adaptation or personalisation to meet their needs.The difficulties related to inadaptability of current learning environments can now be resolved using semantic web technologies such as web ontologies which have been successfully used to drive e-learning personalisation. Nevertheless, e-learning personalisation for students with disabilities has mainly targeted those with single disabilities such as dyslexia or visual impairment, often neglecting those with multiple disabilities due to the difficulty of designing for a combination of disabilities.This thesis argues that it is possible to personalise learning materials for learners with disabilities, including those with multiple disabilities. This is achieved by developing a model that allows the learning environment to present the student with learning materials in suitable formats while considering their disability and learning needs through an ontology-driven and disability-aware personalised e-learning system model (ONTODAPS). A disability ontology known as the Abilities and Disabilities Ontology for Online LEarning and Services (ADOOLES) is developed and used to drive this model. To test the above hypothesis, some case studies are employed to show how the model functions for various individuals with and without disabilities and then the implemented visual interface is experimentally evaluated by eighteen students with disabilities and heuristically by ten lecturers. The results are collected and statistically analysed.The results obtained confirm the above hypothesis and suggest that ONTODAPS can be effectively employed to personalise learning and to manage learning resources. The student participants found that ONTODAPS could aid their learning experience and all agreed that they would like to use this functionality in an existing learning environment. The results also suggest that ONTODAPS provides a platform where students with disabilities can have equivalent learning experience with their peers without disabilities. For the results to be generalised, this study could be extended through further experiments with more diverse groups of students with disabilities and across multiple educational institutions