Martín González Rodríguez

Feijoo.net: an approach to personalized E-learning using learning styles

This paper proposes a model of adaptation called Feijoo.net. Feijoo. net is a system which adapts contents and the presentation of these contents to the learning style of each student. In this model, contents are separated from their presentation on the Web. Feijoo.net is focused on university students. The main goal is to get an adaptation model of the learning of each student following the directives proposed by the cognitive psychology and pedagogy.

Web Navigability Testing with Remote Agents

Usability testing is normally used to determine the navigation map that better adapts to the average-user mental navigation model. However, usability testing is an expensive process, misses the influence that the computer environment has on navigation, and it is not able to record spontaneous user behaviour. The remote testing technique is an interesting and cheaper alternative that avoids the problems commented. We have developed our own set of tools based on data gathering agents for supporting remote testing. In this paper, we comment our experiences designing and developing such kind of systems and the results obtained when conducting human-computer interaction experiments based on access to web sites.

ANTS: An Automatic Navigability Testing Tool for Hypermedia

Multiple navigational graphs can be obtained as the result of the design stage of a hypermedia-based artifact. The only way to know which one adapts better to the user navigational metaphor is by mean of usability testing. This technique is expensive in terms of the number of human resources needed to perform it, and it isn’t able to record spontaneous user behavior. The use of automatic testing tools is an interesting and cheap alternative that avoids the problems commented. We tested our own automatic navigability testing system (ANTS) conducting an experiment to determine where users expect to find the navigational bar of a web site.

Designing User Interfaces Tailored to the Current User’s Requirements in Real Time

Traditional design of user interfaces is based on a perfect knowledge of the user’s interaction requirements for the target audience. This approach leads to user interfaces designed for a generic ideal user who doesn’t exist at all. As a result, every user or the interface has to adapt his/her own user’s interaction requirements to those of this ideal user. In a ideal scenario, there should be as many versions of the user interface as final users. Each of those versions would be designed to satisfy the user’s interaction requirements of a single user. Under this approach, we have designed GADEA, a user interface management system able to design different versions of a user interface, on the fly, depending on the cognitive, perceptive and motive skills of each user of the application. This system observes the users as they perform common tasks, analyzing their behavior in order to determine their interaction requirements.

A development web environment for learning programming languages

This paper proposes an environment for the teaching of program languages in a web environment. We consider that the student has to do exercises when he is learning a programming language; these tasks cause extra difficulties in conventional web environments. To remove these difficulties we propose an application that we have called DWE (Development Web Environment); the core is a language compiler integrated in the web application. Along with this compiler there are other modules to help the student while hes developing the programs; to obtain this we try to facilitate the communication teacher - student and student - student and we try to use the experience from all users in a group.

Adaptable contents visualization (VIC)

VIC is the item inside the e-learning tool PWGD which is addressed to the student, it interacts with him or her, as well. Currently available tools are mainly focussed on teachers, helping them whereas the student can only watch the contents provided by the teacher and in the same way the teacher arranged them. This application aims to make learning easier, in order to do that subject contents will be shaped according to the learning habits of the student. The application follows the pattern Model-View-Ruler, which allows splitting contents and shape, so contents will be adapted to different shapes.

IOWA: intuitive-use oriented webtool for the creation of adapted contents (in an E-learning environment)

In this paper, we propose to include adaptation, in particular to the learning styles, to traditional e-learning systems in order to get a new application which adapts its contents to the user instead of being the user who adapts his habits to what the system requires. We also present the Intuitive-use Oriented Webtool for the creation of Adapted contents (in an e-learning environment), a.k.a. IOWA, an application which allows teachers to create adapted contents which will be showed later to students depending on the style they belong to.

Adaptive interactive dialogs through the web: addressing user's interaction requirements dynamically

Addressing the interaction requirements of the users of a web site at its the design stage seems to be an impossibly task as there are too many cognitive, perceptive and motive factors involved. If a web site pretends to be usable for dozens or even hundreds kinds of different users, it must be generated dynamically, depending on the interaction requirements of the current user.

Dynamic Generation of Interactive Dialogs Based on Intelligent Agents

The design of the lexical and syntactical levels of the user interface of any web based system is commonly based on general human-computer interaction principles targeted to match the interaction requirements of the so-called typical user, an abstract generalization of each user of an application. However the identification of such typical user at the web design stage seems to be an impossible task, considering the dynamic nature of the web, where the user interface of a popular web systems can be used by thousands of different users everyday. In order to avoid this problem, we have designed GADEA, an intelligent user interface management system able to detect different kinds of users by mean of distributed data gathering agents. The information obtained by those agents is used to design interactive dialogues at execution time, which are adapted to the specific cognitive, perceptive and motor characteristics of the current user.