Broadband User Modelling: where AIED meets ie-TV

Earlier this year we were asked to offer a perspective from AIED on the development of interactive educational television (ie-TV). This theme paper discusses our response to the question: what can the field of AIED offer to developers of education for the wired and wireless future with particular respect to TV? We note the changes that have taken place over the past 50 years in the nature and proliferation of computing technology. We also note that this growth has not been entirely without its problems and stress the need to learn from this before moving into further new territory. To this end we consider the work done within both the field of AIED and broadcasting to highlight the areas of potential synergy. It is this expertise within broadcasting in narrative, suspense and animation combined with AIED learner modelling and grounded approaches to teaching and learning that offer a possible answer to those who may ask: interactive educational TV – so what? Interactive educational television is a fast-evolving arena which therefore requires a flexible conceptual framework based upon sound pedagogy that is social, constructivist and enables bespoke learning experiences to huge numbers of learners at disparate as well as contained locations. It offers a great opportunity for AIED experts to bring individualised learning to all through the airwaves. In this paper we outline the current state of play for Interactive Broadcasting, and survey what both AIED and traditional broadcasting have to offer ie-TV. We propose a translation of Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach into a framework for the design of ie-TV. In particular we discuss the importance of a Broadband User Model and flesh out our current development of a proof of concept prototype.