Advances in Authoring of Adaptive Web-based Systems

Authoring of Adaptive Hypermedia has been long considered as secondary to adaptive hypermedia delivery. However, authoring is not trivial at all. There exist some approaches to help authors to build adaptive-hypermedia-based systems, yet there is a strong need for high-level approaches, formalisms and tools that support and facilitate the description of reusable adaptive websites. However, a shift in interest occurred (fuelled in part by the A3H workshop series), as it became clearer that the implementation-oriented approach would forever keep adaptive hypermedia away from the 'layman' author. The creator of adaptive hypermedia cannot be expected to know all facets of this process, but can be reasonably trusted to be an expert in one of them. It is therefore necessary to research and establish the components of an adaptive hypermedia system from an authoring perspective, catering for the different author personas that are required. This type of research has proven to lead to a modular view on the adaptive hypermedia. Whilst all of the papers presented in this special issue discuss various aspects of this modular approach to authoring, the first three focus specifically on how best to simplify the authoring process. In Paper 1 (" Merging Strategies for Authoring QoE-based Adaptive Hypermedia ") the authors show how the modularization of complex adaptation strategies, along with their subsequent merging and re-use takes adaptive authoring a step closer to being readily accessible by the lay author. Paper 2 (" Authoring and Delivering Personalised Simulations – an Innovative Approach to Adaptive eLearning for Soft Skills "), presents the ACTSim tool that has been specifically designed to allow for the creation of training simulations by subject matter experts rather than programming experts (as is often the case in these complex simulation tools).