ADAPTIVITY IN E-LEARNING – PROVIDED BY KNOWLEDGE MAPS

Besides the often-cited advantages of independence of place and time, e-learning holds a further large degree of potential in comparison to conventional class teaching: Adaptivity in terms of content. This idea describes the ability of a teaching concept to offer support for the learner that is fully adapted to the individual knowledge level. The current contribution presents an innovative system to assure adaptivity with regard to content for an e-learning application. Robust Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) allows the knowledge of a learner to be visualized as a knowledge map. These maps are especially sensitive to relational connections of the declarative knowledge contents, which are depicted in a two-dimensional space. Based on the comparison of a learner model with a target model (by means of Procrustes transformation), individual knowledge deficiencies can be detected. This constitutes the basis for specific feedback, learning recommendations, and individualized exercises. The delineated procedure is presented in the framework of the e-learning environment “Psychopathology Taught Online (PTO)”, within which it faces its first practical application. Introduction: Concept and Requirements of Adaptive Knowledge Transfer Computers offer considerable potential for an application as a flexible learning and teaching medium. Besides the possibility of designing lessons independently of place and time, and a number of other advantages, computerization (the employment of digital learning systems) provides the technical basis for an individually adapted learning process. Based on the reactions of a learner, intelligent software is able to dynamically adapt the lessons to the current knowledge level and hence optimally foster an individual’s learning. Such Adaptive Tutorial Systems (ATS) are characterized by algorithms, which react to the individual behavior of the user autonomously and in an appropriate manner (cf. Lesgold 1988a, 1988b; Lesgold, Eggan, Katz & Rao, 1992; Leutner, 1992; Rüschoff, 1989). The challenge is to find an optimal balance between the learner’s need for support and the material offered in the teaching situation. Adaptivity in the learning process denotes, in its simplest meaning: The system meets the learner, based on a diagnosis of his or her learning status, where he or she is currently situated (Leutner, 1992, 1993, 2002). The tutorial system translates the knowledge diagnosis into corresponding teaching, for instance into giving feedback about the current knowledge level to the learner, into recommending contents which should be repeated, and/or into putting together exercises specifically tailored to the inadequately known contents. This ability of the tutorial system is the result of the employment of the knowledge expertise inherent in the system, which constitutes the abovementioned “intelligence” of an ATS (Leutner, 1992). This procedure promises a fast learning progress. Repeated learning of already known contents is reduced to a minimum, which results in a higher efficiency compared to a learning curriculum structured in a linear fashion. Further advantages can be seen in the increased motivation and attention of the learner as a result of the feedback about the current knowledge level. The tutorial support facilitates the user’s feeling of being taken seriously and is able to tackle the difficult problem of finding the appropriate learning path. These arguments have an increased relevance in particular in asynchronous and non-cooperative applications of e-learning such as “Psychopathology Taught Online” (PTO), which will be used to demonstrate the implementation of adaptivity. In such an application, the tutorial support facilitates the semantically meaningful (intelligent) interaction of the allegedly passive, computer-based medium with the user. The aim is to (re)organize, stabilize and differentiate the cognitive structures of the learner, based on the detection of contents that are falsely known or not known and the resulting reactions. To meet the briefly mentioned requirements and aims, the system has to comprise the following elements: 1 This procedure corresponds to the stimulus-centered approach (cf. Crowder, 1959; Leutner, 2002).