Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Evaluating the Impact of an Arabic Version of an Adaptive
Learning System Based on the Felder-Silverman’s
Learning Style Instrument
Nahla Aljojo 1 , Carl Adams 2 , Huda Saifuddin 3 and Zainab Alsehaimi 4
1
Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdul Aziz
University, Jeddah, S.A
2
Computing department, Technology College, University of Portsmouth,
Portsmouth, UK
3
Cognitive Psychology department, Arts and Humanities faculty, King Abdul
Aziz University, Jeddah, S.A
4
Public administration department, Economics and administration faculty,
King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, S.A
Nahla_Aljojo@yahoo.com
carl.adams@port.ac.uk
hbourhan@gmail.com
Zalsehaimi@msn.com
Abstract: This paper presents an approach to integrate learning styles into adaptive e-learning hypermedia
system and an approach to evaluate the impact of such a learning system. The main objective was to develop an
adaptive e-learning system based on individual student’s learning style, then to try and assess the effectiveness
of the system on the students’ learning. From a technical perspective, the system development involved the
combination of SQL server 2005, SQL database and Active Server Pages were used to implement the system
based on learning styles to present the appropriate subject matter, including the content, Teaching strategies and
Electronic Media. The system was organized into 3 models; domain model, learner model and adaptation model.
The 3 models interact together to perform adaptively. From an experiment design perspective, experiments
involved applying using the system on two cohorts of students and evaluating the impact on learning
achievement. Inferential statistics were applied to make inferences from the sample data to more general
conditions. Descriptive statistics were applied simply to describe what's going on in the sample data. Results
showed that students taught using learning style adaptive system performed significantly better in academic
achievement (p