Adaptivity
in e-learning
1 Czech Technical University in
Prague, Department of Cybernetics
The purpose of educational systems in general is to provide learners with information and practice opportunities to help them to reach certain learning goals, that is, to help learners to learn certain skills and/or to increase their knowledge about a certain topic. Different learners might have different needs, characteristics, prior knowledge, etc., which might require the presentation of different information to different learners and/or in a different format. It is the purpose of adaptive educational systems to take these aspects of individual learners into account when presenting information and/or practise opportunities in order to make the learning process as effective, efficient, and motivating as possible. In this paper there are described basic demands put on adaptive e-learning system. Several types of barriers protecting e-learning systems from being more used and some recommendations how to overcome these barriers are stated. Strategies how to adapt e-learning systems and make them more usable and favourable tool for non typical users are proposed. Comparison of several (mostly open source) available e-learning systems is made from the point of their adaptivity. Practical experiences with using Moodle e-learning system are described in the end of the paper.
Keywords: adaptivity, e-learning barriers, students’ involvement, Moodle