January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

Despotović-Zrakić, M., Marković, A., Bogdanović, Z., Barać, D., & Krčo, S. (2012). Providing Adaptivity in Moodle LMS
Courses. Educational Technology & Society, 15 (1), 326–338.
Providing Adaptivity in Moodle LMS Courses
Marijana Despotović-Zrakić, Aleksandar Marković, Zorica Bogdanović * , Dušan Barać and
Srdjan Krčo
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, 11000 Belgrade, Jove Ilića 154, Serbia //
maja@myelab.net // aca@fon.rs // zorica@myelab.net // dusan@myelab.net // krco@myelab.net
* Corresponding author
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we describe an approach to providing adaptivity in e-education courses. The primary goal of the
paper is to enhance an existing e-education system, namely Moodle LMS, by developing a method for creating
adaptive courses, and to compare its effectiveness with non-adaptive education approach. First, we defined the
basic requirements of a course adaptation and the steps required to implement it. Based on the collected data, we
identified the characteristic groups of students and then classified all participating students into these groups.
The final adaptation of courses was performed in the distance education system of the University of Belgrade, in
the Laboratory for e-business, Faculty of Organizational Sciences. Findings of the experimental study showed
that the students’ effectiveness and achievements in learning were higher when they attended courses adapted
using the described method, in comparison to the non-adaptive e-learning courses.
Keywords
Adaptive e-learning systems, e-Learning course adaptation, Group personalization, Moodle LMS
Introduction
Learning management systems (LMS) are powerful integrated systems that support a number of activities performed
by teachers and students during the e-learning process 00. Teachers use an LMS to develop web-based course notes
and quizzes, to communicate with students and to monitor and grade student progress. Students use it for learning,
communication, and collaboration.
One of a widely used open-source systems for learning process management is Moodle (Modular Object Oriented
Developmental Learning Environment) 0. Moodle LCMS is in use for the last five years in the teaching process at
the University of Belgrade, in the Laboratory for e-business of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences. Each school
year, more than 700 students use this system on all the study levels (undergraduate, master, and PhD studies). Elearning
courses include the following areas: Internet technologies, E-business, Computer simulation, Mobile
computing, and Internet marketing 0. In addition, we use the concept of blended learning throughout the whole
teaching process 0.
Adaptive e-learning systems
In most cases, LMS users belong to heterogeneous groups with different individual, sometime even adverse,
characteristics and needs. The adaptation of e-education systems to an individual or to a group based on their
characteristics, expectations, knowledge, and preferences of the students is the next step in the evolution of the elearning
systems.
The lack of adaptive learning environments or an environment with adaptive features is partly due to the “one-sizefits-all”
concept 000 in use today which presents the same static content to all students. Several studies suggested
that this type of e-learning system organization were not successful 00. Therefore, the emphasis is moving towards
learner-oriented platforms and putting student’s expectations, motivation, habits, learning styles, needs, etc. in the
focus of interest 0.
According to 0, an e-learning system is considered to be adaptive if it is capable of: monitoring the activities of its
users; interpreting these on the basis of domain-specific models; inferring user requirements and preferences out of
the interpreted activities, appropriately representing these in associated models; and, finally, acting upon the
available knowledge on its users and the subject matter at hand, to dynamically facilitate the learning process. Since
the system behavior adapts to a person, this kind of adaptation is also called personalization. Thus, adaptive e-
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