Challenges in Developing Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems

Traditional educational hypermedia systems afford learners the “one size fits all” approach to learning (Brusilovsky, 2003, 2004; Chatti, Jarke, & Specht, 2010; Hsieh, Lee, & Su, 2013). In the “one size fits all” approach to learning each student in every cohort of students is given access to the same learning objects in the same way as every other student who is studying the same course. The learning objects or learning content stays static regardless of the learning requirements of different students

Personal learning environments in the workplace: an exploratory study into the key business decision factors

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) have emerged as a solution to the need of learners for open and easily customisable learning environments. PLEs essentially hand complete control over the learning process to the learner. However, this learning model is not fully compatible with learning in the workplace, which is influenced by certain business factors. These factors are being investigated in this paper, through an exploratory study within a variety of private organisations in the UK. Based on the results of this study, 10 key factors affecting the adoption of PLEs in the workplace have been identified. The authors propose a framework for the adoption and diffusion of PLEs, aiming at informing decision makers within commercial organisations about the successful introduction of novel learning methodologies in their respective organisations

Rethinking expertise in the web 2.0 era: Lessons learned from project durian

Social software facilitates the linking of people in unprecedented ways and leads to new knowledge creation and application practices. Even though expertise remains an important constituent of these practices, there is a knowledge gap in the literature regarding its role. This chapter was written with the aim of filling this gap by using Project Durian as a case study. Project Durian presented a unique opportunity to study expertise as mediated by social software because it involved both social software and various layers, forms, and configurations of expertise. In this chapter, data from Project Durian are used to examine the outsourcing of tasks and the role that social software played in that outsourcing. Data analysis indicated that, in the hybrid practice that was established, expertise was spatio-temporally distributed, involved individuals with a broad range of skills, facilitated the crossing of disciplinary boundaries, and was renegotiated. The implications of these findings for expertise in the Web 2.0 era are discussed. © 2013, IGI Global