Learning Design in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems

After more than ten years of research aiming at defining methods and techniques to deliver personalized instruction, Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems have not made the jump into real practice systems. Reasons for this include the complexity of their development, their use of exclusive methods for defining adaptivity and educational elements, and their lack of interoperation amongst courses and applications. A possible alternative to cope with these issues is using as a common notational method the IMS Learning Design specification. This paper attempts to bring AEHS and IMS LD closer to each other in order to define adaptivity behaviour. To this end, it outlines how IMS LD could be used to define personalization properties and adaptive techniques and, based on that, it proposes a component called Adaptive Learning Designs, and an authoring tool to create these components. Furthermore, the paper discusses the benefits and limitations of IMS LD to define adaptivity behaviour, and ends suggesting additional research lines.