Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems

Catering Learning Styles

Learners have different needs and characteristics such as prior knowledge, motivation, cognitive traits,
and learning styles. For this reason, attention is being paid to characteristics such as learning styles, their
impact on learning, and how these individual characteristics can be supported by learning systems. My
aim of the research is to provide an Adaptive E-learning System at the institute level as well as in
distance learning. A system that is capable of providing appropriate material to the students according
to their physical needs, their location, their learning styles, their preferences and context.

Providing learning environment according to the learners needs is very important. If we want every
student to be a successful learner than there individual preferences should be considered. The teaching
style of instructor in traditional learning environment is may be fit for few students but for many
students that may not be appropriate. This is the reason, that few students in a class are brilliant and
rest of all are just average or below average students. Many researchers consider that learning style of a
student is the most important factor in learning process and they believe that integrating learning styles
in education can make learning an easy process.

The domain of learning style is complicated and vast. Although intense research has been conducted,
many important issues are still open and controversial. The challenge is to clarify these controversies
and to give a clear view of this domain by solving these issues. By the time, several learning style models
exist. They all integrate some aspects of learning and some overlap each other. These numerous
learning style models leads to criticism and the question on how to incorporate all different styles of
learning in education, also, which learning style model is appropriate and should be used.

Moreover, the similarities and relationship between these different learning style models are mostly not
elaborated. Therefore, a challenge of this domain is to conduct research involving all learning style
models and their dimensions, so that their relationships to each other as well as to other relevant
factors of learning (e.g., cognitive styles and cognitive abilities) become clear, evaluate them in order to
identify major learning style models, and develop a complete model that integrates all related features
of learning styles.

My aim is to produce an AES that in the first phase gathers the learners requirements. Based on these
requirements it creates in the second phase a learner model. Then in the third phase it selects the
appropriate material on the base of that LM (learner model). In the last phase it presents the material to
the learner in the form that is appropriate to the learners context. As the user interacts with the system
it will update the LM thus to provide the student with the maximum adaptivity. It can also support the
distance learning. So that, a complete Adaptive environment can be provided to the learners who

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cannot go to any institute for some reason. This system can cater every age group. Only the pool for the
learning material is different for different age groups. Adaptivity will be done on the base of LM which is
of course different for different individuals.

There are different adaptive educational hypermedia systems which provide adaptivity according to
learning styles. These systems focus on how to collect information about learners and which adaptivity
feature to be used in order to provide adaptivity. Although intensive research has been done in this
domain and many models and number of systems exist, still there is a need of a complete system that
incorporates different learning styles and can satisfy different learners needs.

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