Data Mining and Learning Analytics

CHAPTER 6DESIGN OF AN ADAPTIVE LEARNING SYSTEM AND EDUCATIONAL DATA MINING

Zhiyong Liu¹ and Nick Cercone²

¹ Department of Software, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

² Department of Computer Science and Engineering, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Within e‐learning environment and research, adaptive learning systems (ALS) can provide an adaptive learning environment that intelligently adapts to a user’s needs by presenting suitable information, instructional materials, feedback, and recommendations based on the user’s unique individual characteristics and situation (Graf and Kinshuk 2014). Adaptive learning has great advantages in providing users with specific and personalized knowledge when required, and it also has the potential to improve learning outcomes by catering to individual learning needs (Jones and Jo 2004). Adaptive strategies have been implemented in education since the educators started looking at alternative methods to improve the outcomes of student’s learning and understanding since the beginning of the twentieth century (Talley and Martinez 1998). In 1996, Brusilovsky first proposed the term “adaptive hypermedia (AH) system” and stated: “AH systems can build a model of the goals, preferences and knowledge of the individual user and use this throughout the interaction for adaptation to the needs of that user.” He also noted: “AH systems can be useful in any application area where the system is expected to be used by people with different ...