Chapter 9 A New Process Phase Diagnostic Technique : Visualized Interface for Diagnosing Learning Progress

By improving the imperfections of previous diagnostic techniques, the new process phase real-time diagnostic technique is developed to be suitable for an adaptive e-learning instructional process. This new diagnostic technique combines measures of a learner’s learning effort with associated performance in order to compare the efficiency of learning condition in a process phase, real-time, and non-interfering instructional process. The learning effort is represented as a visualized learning effort curve which is a user-friendly interface to enhance the decision making of learning path through the effective interaction between instructors and learners in an adaptive e-learning instructional process. The situated experiment was designed based on the new diagnostic technique and applied on 165 university students. In-depth group interview was conducted right after accomplishing the experiment. Results indicate that the learning effort curve is a capable real-time and non-interfering tool to diagnose learning progress in adaptive e-learning process.