Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Nahla Aljojo et al.
On a micro level the learning content was structured according to Merrill’s component display theory
(CDT) (1994). CDT was one of the first instructional design theories that separated content from
instructional strategy and it was therefore an important contribution to the field of educational
technology (Kovalchick & Dawson, 2002; wolf 2003). The theory comprises four primary presentation
forms: rules (general form), instances (concrete examples), practice, and recall. A secondary layer of
components includes prerequisites, objectives, helps, mnemonics and feedback. According to CDT,
instruction is most effective if all primary and secondary components are present in the instructional
materials. In line with CDT, learners should be able to select and jump between components that best
suit their needs and preferences. See table 2.
Table 2: Components of an exemplary TASAM learning sequence
Component TASAM equivalent content
Objective Content page :Objective of each related concept
Example Content page :Example of each related concept
Elaboration Content page: summary of each related concept
Elaboration Content page: outline of each related concept
Practice Content page :Practice or of each related concept
Recall Content page :Test end of each related concept
feedback Correct answers of test
The concept for providing adaptivity is based on representing specific course elements, or topics,
grouped into chapters for a course. The courses chosen to apply the TASAM adaptive system were
short introductory statistic courses aimed at first level undergraduates used across two faculties at the
King Abdul-Aziz University in Saudi Arabia: The ‘Arts and Humanities’ faculty. The Statistics topic was
chosen for several reasons. Firstly, expert-refined and validated learning materials were available,
which were kindly provided by evaluation of teacher. Secondly, it was a relatively straightforward task
to re-design the materials of a Statistics -related topic for a computer-based environment. Thirdly,
Statistics was considered a timely and desirable learning objective for potential participants. Lastly,
Statistics course is an abstract topic, which opened opportunities to develop different representations
for the same concept by employing different electronically media. The statistics TASAM system ran
between 2010 and 2011. Content improvement suggestions and general feedback was collected from
participating tutors and students.
2.1.2 Learner model
A distinct feature of an adaptive e-learning system is the learner model it employs, that is, a
representation of information about an individual learner. Learner modeling and adaptation are
strongly correlated, in the sense that the amount and nature of the information represented in the
learner model depend largely on the kind of adaptation effect that the system has to deliver.
The learner model in TASAM represents the knowledge of the system about the learner. It reflects
several characteristics of the learners and supports the communication between learner and system.
In our approach, the learner model includes general information about the learner, his/her dominant
learning style, username, password, unique ID, age, and e-mail. The learning style state stores values
for objects concepts to match learner's learning style that is, media type. It associates a number of
learner preferences with each object concept of the domain sub-model resources structures.
2.1.3 Adaptation model
The adaptation model in TASAM specified the way in which learning style modify the presentation of
the content. It was implemented as a set of the classical structure: If condition, then action type rules.
These rules form the connection between the domain model and learner model to update the learner
model and provide appropriate learning materials. Following Kinshuk and Lin (2003) moderate and
strong preference were grouped together to enable 16 types of combination of leaning style
dimensions from which representation templates were generated (see table 3). This provided the
basis for enabling learners with different learning styles to view different presentations of the same
educational material ( AlJojo and Adams 2009).
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