Navegação adaptativa: a utilização de redes neurais recorrentes como ferramenta de previsão

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação

Βελτίωση του Περιβάλλοντος Διεπαφής του Προσαρμοστικού Εκπαιδευτικού Περιβάλλοντος ALMA

Σκοπός της παρούσας εργασίας είναι αφενός η θεωρητική ενασχόληση με τη διεπαφή χρήστη ως σημαντικού στοιχείου της αλληλεπίδρασης στο πλαίσιο Προσαρμοστικών Εκπαιδευτικών Συστημάτων μέσω Διαδικτύου και αφετέρου ο σχεδιασμός και η υλοποίηση, σύμφωνα με τις απαιτήσεις που η θεωρητική ενασχόληση υπαγόρευσε, ενός περιβάλλοντος διεπαφής. Ως τέτοιο περιβάλλον επιλέχθηκε, υπό μορφή «μελέτης περίπτωσης», το Προσαρμοστικό Εκπαιδευτικό Περιβάλλον ALMA, και υλοποιήθηκε βελτίωση του προϋφισταμένου περιβάλλοντος διεπαφής, αναφορικά με το γραφικό περιβάλλον, τη διάταξη καθώς και άλλα χαρακτηριστικά, ώστε να επιτευχθεί χρηστικότητα διεπαφής. Η χρηστικότητα της διεπαφής προσδιορίζει την ποιότητα αλληλεπίδρασης του μοντέλου της διεπαφής με εκείνο της μάθησης στο πλαίσιο της αρχιτεκτονικής ενός προσαρμοστικού συστήματος.The purpose of this paper is on the one hand to theoretically venture on the premise of user interface as an integral part of the interface in the context of Web-based Adaptive Educational Systems; on the other hand, the design and creation of a user interface, according to the requirements set by said theoretical analysis. As such an environment and in the form of a “case study”, the Adaptive Learning Environment ALMA has been chosen and its previous user interface has been optimized in regard to its graphical interface, its layout and other characteristics, in order to achieve interface usability. Interface usability dictates the quality of interaction between the interface model and the learning model, as part of an adjustable system’s architecture

Knowledge driven approaches to e-learning recommendation.

Learners often have difficulty finding and retrieving relevant learning materials to support their learning goals because of two main challenges. The vocabulary learners use to describe their goals is different from that used by domain experts in teaching materials. This challenge causes a semantic gap. Learners lack sufficient knowledge about the domain they are trying to learn about, so are unable to assemble effective keywords that identify what they wish to learn. This problem presents an intent gap. The work presented in this thesis focuses on addressing the semantic and intent gaps that learners face during an e-Learning recommendation task. The semantic gap is addressed by introducing a method that automatically creates background knowledge in the form of a set of rich learning-focused concepts related to the selected learning domain. The knowledge of teaching experts contained in e-Books is used as a guide to identify important domain concepts. The concepts represent important topics that learners should be interested in. An approach is developed which leverages the concept vocabulary for representing learning materials and this influences retrieval during the recommendation of new learning materials. The effectiveness of our approach is evaluated on a dataset of Machine Learning and Data Mining papers, and our approach outperforms benchmark methods. The results confirm that incorporating background knowledge into the representation of learning materials provides a shared vocabulary for experts and learners, and this enables the recommendation of relevant materials. We address the intent gap by developing an approach which leverages the background knowledge to identify important learning concepts that are employed for refining learners' queries. This approach enables us to automatically identify concepts that are similar to queries, and take advantage of distinctive concept terms for refining learners' queries. Using the refined query allows the search to focus on documents that contain topics which are relevant to the learner. An e-Learning recommender system is developed to evaluate the success of our approach using a collection of learner queries and a dataset of Machine Learning and Data Mining learning materials. Users with different levels of expertise are employed for the evaluation. Results from experts, competent users and beginners all showed that using our method produced documents that were consistently more relevant to learners than when the standard method was used. The results show the benefits in using our knowledge driven approaches to help learners find relevant learning materials

A reference architecture for adaptive hypermedia applications

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An empirical investigation to examine the usability issues of using adaptive, adaptable, and mixed-initiative approaches in in-teractive systems

The combination of graphical user interface (GUI) and usability evaluation presents an advantage to mastering every piece of software and ensuring perfect quality of work. The increasing demand for online learning is becoming more important, both individually and academically. This thesis introduces and describes an empirical study to investigate and compare how vocabulary can be learned by using different interactive approaches; specifically, a static learning website (with straightforward words and meanings), an adaptable learning website (allowing the user to choose a learning method), an adaptive learning website (a system-chosen way of learning), and a mixed-initiative (mixing approaches and techniques). The purpose of this study is to explore and determine the effects of these approaches in learning vocabu-lary achievement to enhance vocabulary learning for non-English speakers. The par-ticipants were Arabic speakers. The three levels of vocabulary learning activities were categorised as easy, medium, and hard. The independent variables (IVs) were controlled during the experiment to ensure consistency and were as follows: tasks, learning effects, and time. The dependent variables (DVs) were learning vocabulary achievements and scores. Two aims were explored in relation to the effects of these approaches to achievement. The first related to learning vocabularies for non-English speakers tackling the difficulties of the English language and the second related to studying system usability of learning English vocabulary in terms of usability measures (efficiency, frequency of error occurrence, effectiveness, and satisfaction). For this purpose, a vocabulary-learning language website was designed, implement-ed, and tested empirically. To fulfill these requirements, it was first necessary to measure two usability components (efficiency and effectiveness) with a within-subject design of n = 24 subjects recruited and, for users’ satisfaction, a between-subject design of n = 99 subjects recruited, while investigating satisfaction with a system usability scale (SUS) survey. The results and data analysis were described. Overall, the results shown were all satisfactory

Uma abordagem sobre o uso da hipermídia adaptativa em ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção.Sistemas de Hipermídia Adaptativa (SHA) constituem uma área de pesquisa recente com grande potencial de aplicação no desenvolvimento de ambientes de aprendizagem na Web

Proposta de uma framework para desenvolvimento de sistemas tutores inteligentes

Dissertação de Mestrado em Sistemas de InformaçãoEste trabalho reflecte um levantamento sobre a área dos Sistemas Tutores Inteligentes, focando a sua evolução e características típicas. As arquitecturas propostas por vários investigadores são referenciadas, e a arquitectura clássica é detalhada em cada um dos seus módulos constituintes. É feita uma breve análise ao desenvolvimento de Sistemas Tutores Inteligentes, analisando as debilidades e pontos fortes de cada sistema. Tendo por base o estudo efectuado, é proposta uma Framework de Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Tutores Inteligentes que procura precisamente colmatar essas debilidades, mantendo as boas práticas de desenvolvimento, incorporando as características desejáveis que foram identificadas, no sentido de “apontar o caminho” para o que se designou como uma nova geração de Sistemas Tutores Inteligentes.In this work a survey in the field of Intelligent Tutoring Systems is done, focusing their evolution and main typical characteristics. Some of the Intelligent Tutoring Systems architectures proposed by researchers in the field are briefly enumerated and explained, and the classical architecture is detailed in each of its component modules. The development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems, together with some of the systems developed so far, is used to identify the weakness and strong issues of each system. A development Framework for Intelligent Tutoring Systems is proposed, which tries to address those weaknesses and incorporate the desirable characteristics that wore identified, in order to “show the way” to what was named “The New Generation of Intelligent Tutoring Systems”

HIPPO -- an adaptive open hyptertext system

The hypertext paradigm offers a powerful way of modelling complex knowledge structures. Information can be arranged into networks, and connected using hypertext links. This has led to the development of more open hypertext design, which allow hypertext services to be integrated seamlessly into the user's environment. Recent research has also seen the emergence of adaptive hypertext, which uses feedback from the user to modify objects in the hypertext. The research presented in this thesis describes the HIPPO hypertext model which combines many of the ideas in open hypertext research, with existing work on adaptive hypertext systems. The idea of fuzzy anchors are introduced which allow authors to express the uncertainty and vagueness which is inherent in a hypertext anchor. Fuzzy anchors use partial truth values which allow authors to define a "degree of membership" for anchors. Anchors no longer have fixed, discrete boundaries, but have more in common with contour lines used in map design. These fuzzy anchors are used as the basis for an adaptive model, so that anchors can be modified in response to user actions. The HIPPO linking model introduces linkbase trees which combine link collections into inheritance hierarchies. These are used to construct reusable inheritance trees, which allow authors to reuse and build on existing link collections. An adaptive model is also presented to modify these linkbase hierarchies. Finally, the HIPPO system is re-implemented using a widely distributed architecture. This distributed model implements a hypertext system as a collection of lightweight, distributed services. The benefits of this distributed hypertext model are discussed, and an adaptive model is then suggested

HIPPO -- an adaptive open hyptertext system

The hypertext paradigm offers a powerful way of modelling complex knowledge structures. Information can be arranged into networks, and connected using hypertext links. This has led to the development of more open hypertext design, which allow hypertext services to be integrated seamlessly into the user's environment. Recent research has also seen the emergence of adaptive hypertext, which uses feedback from the user to modify objects in the hypertext. The research presented in this thesis describes the HIPPO hypertext model which combines many of the ideas in open hypertext research, with existing work on adaptive hypertext systems. The idea of fuzzy anchors are introduced which allow authors to express the uncertainty and vagueness which is inherent in a hypertext anchor. Fuzzy anchors use partial truth values which allow authors to define a "degree of membership" for anchors. Anchors no longer have fixed, discrete boundaries, but have more in common with contour lines used in map design. These fuzzy anchors are used as the basis for an adaptive model, so that anchors can be modified in response to user actions. The HIPPO linking model introduces linkbase trees which combine link collections into inheritance hierarchies. These are used to construct reusable inheritance trees, which allow authors to reuse and build on existing link collections. An adaptive model is also presented to modify these linkbase hierarchies. Finally, the HIPPO system is re-implemented using a widely distributed architecture. This distributed model implements a hypertext system as a collection of lightweight, distributed services. The benefits of this distributed hypertext model are discussed, and an adaptive model is then suggested