Elaine Pearson

Creating personalized assessments based on learner knowledge and objectives in a hypermedia Web testing application

This paper presents an adaptive Web testing system where the adaptation of the testing procedure relies on the performance, the prior knowledge and the goals and preferences of the test participants. The main aim of the paper is to discuss the utility of the adaptive assessment tool. Therefore, the paper presents the authoring process of a number of adaptive assessments, where the educators utilized different adaptive rules to create summative and formative assessments. The paper presents the employed adaptive rules and summarizes the key points of the pilot study.

Development and trial of an educational tool to support the accessibility evaluation process

This paper describes the design and development of a web accessibility knowledge management tool, known as the Accessibility Evaluation Assistant (AEA) designed to assist novice auditors in the process of an accessibility evaluation. The software incorporates a structured walkthrough approach to guide the auditor through a series of checks for established accessibility principles with the goal of conducting a comprehensive accessibility evaluation. The tool also offers the functionality to tailor the evaluation and prioritise checks based on the needs of two different user groups, or the specific content features of the website. The tool has recently been trialled with a group of 38 undergraduate computing students studying an Accessibility and Adaptive Technologies module with the aim of assessing its reliability and accuracy to validate the method. Some initial conclusions about the reliability and validity of the method and the pedagogical implications of the tool are presented. The results will help highlight the checks that can easily be verified by novices, and those that require a more detailed understanding of accessibility; require informed judgement; or are open to individual interpretation.

Measuring the conformance of hypermedia assessment tools to QTI

The sharing and exchange of assessment data between educational applications is a novel aim in learning technology. Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) is a learning standard for coding assessment data. It was created in order to promote interoperability between assessment tools. For tools to be interoperable, they need to have a high level of conformance to the QTI specification. The main aim of this paper is to methodologically evaluate the conformance of authoring tools to QTI. The evaluation showed that most of the tools have implemented only a small part of the learning standard.

Inclusive, Adaptive Design for Students with Learning Disabilities

Young adults with severe disabilities and learning difficulties (SLD) have very limited access to appropriate learning resources. Their unique individual needs and requirements prevent them from accessing traditional methods of online learning, and resources tend not to be age appropriate. The majority of SLD learners has difficulty accessing a computer with standard peripherals such as a mouse and relies on assistive technologies (e.g. switches) to do so. Each learner tends to have specific needs that must be addressed in order to provide an accessible and adaptive platform for learning. The aim of this research project was, with the assistance and support of the learners and their tutors, to design and develop an adaptable and inclusive online learning environment specifically catering for the needs of young adults with SLD. Each stage of development was prototyped and assessed in the college environment to ensure the needs of the learners were thoroughly addressed.

An adaptable personal learning environment for e-learning and e-assessment

This paper proposes a component model and development framework for an open source Adaptable Personal Learning Environment (APLE), an e-Learning environment which is responsive to an individual learners needs or preferences and to the environment in which they are working. In this paper we briefly cover three separate areas of the proposed systems: firstly the component model and open source development framework for an APLE itself; secondly the development of adaptive learning objects; thirdly adaptive e-Assessment, based around models for formative assessment and evaluation.

Focusing on content reusability and interoperability in a personalized hypermedia assessment tool

This paper presents the development of a modularized hypermedia testing tool, called iAdaptTest, based entirely on e-learning specifications and discusses how this architecture improves the reusability and the interoperability of the learning data. All the categories of data,—that is—topics, user profiles, testing data, adaptive rules, and testing results are coded in XML format complying with Topic Maps, IMS LIP and IMS QTI. The data are stored in distinct files and can be independently shared across different educational applications. The paper concludes with an evaluation study concerning the creation of formative and summative assessments for adult seminars. Through focused interviews, the participants of the study identified the ability to share information and the multi-criteria adaptation options as the most important features of the system. Further, in the second phase of the evaluation the files produced were shared with other educational applications and thus it was verified that the learning data could be imported and rendered correctly.

Exploring the Development of Adaptable Learning Objects. A Practical Approach

Changes in legislation, an emphasis on widening participation and the increasing reliance on online techniques for learning and teaching have contributed to improved opportunities for students with disabilities. The need to cater for the needs and preferences of the individual learner is presenting significant challenges for the learning designer. This research suggests a solution that is based on the principle that learning content can be generated from adaptable aggregations of learning objects and media components. This paper describes the concept of an authoring tool (LOTTI) that supports the design of adaptable, reusable and pedagogically rich learning objects using proven learning patterns and capitalises upon the recent focus of metadata standards for adaptability. We explore its potential within an accessibility service that maps the learners’ profiles requirements against the learning objects features.

An educational tool to support the accessibility evaluation process

This paper describes the development of a web accessibility knowledge management tool, known as the Accessibility Evaluation Assistant (AEA), designed to assist novice auditors in the process of an accessibility evaluation. The tool is designed primarily for undergraduate and postgraduate computing students with limited knowledge of web accessibility, limited opportunity to study accessibility and limited access to expert reviewers or disabled user groups. The software supports the novice auditor through a series of tailored checks based on a specified user groups, or the specific content features of the website. This process enables the novice auditor to draw more accurate conclusions about the accessibility of individual web sites, and facilitates effective prioritization when conducting fixes.

Formal specification of an adaptable personal learning environment using prolog

The need to ensure that e-learning content is accessible to a wide range of individuals means user profiling and adaptability are increasingly important to all academic institutions. This paper outlines the problems associated with inclusive e-learning and the role of user profiles and adaptation services to support personalisation. The paper introduces the framework for an Adaptable Personal Learning Environment (APLE) and explores how one component, the transformation, augmentation and substitution service, can be formally specified using Prolog. This service is closely related to the IMS AccessForAll service and the Prolog specification helps computer scientists, educationalists and developers understand how e-learning content can be adapted to the needs and preferences of a range of users.

From a Personal Learning Environment to an Adaptable Personal Learning Environment: Meeting the Needs and Preferences of Disabled Learners

Researchers and educational technologists are striving to achieve e-learning solutions that offer choice and flexibility in the time, place and mode of learning. Developments that centre on user preference and personalisation have yet to make a significant impact on institutional learning environments and this limitation has given rise to the concept of the Personal Learning Environment. This paper considers a system that takes this concept one step further to cater for the needs and preferences of disabled learners – an Adaptable Personal Learning Environment.