Adaptive hypermedia courses : qualitative and quantitative evaluation and tool support

of Thesis presented to COPPE/UFRJ and to TU/e as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) ADAPTIVE HYPERMEDIA COURSES: QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION AND TOOL SUPPORT Vinicius Faria Culmant Ramos November/2013 Advisors: Geraldo Bonorino Xexéo Paul Maria Emile De Bra Department: Systems Engineering and Computer Science The focus of this work is the evaluation of adaptive courses created and delivery by AHA! (the Adaptive Hypermedia Architecture) and GALE (the Generic Adaptation Language and Engine developed in the EU FP7 project GRAPPLE). The main goal of these evaluations is to understand the influence of adaptation on students’ learning in an adaptive hypertext course. The evaluation methods are divided into qualitative and quantitative ones. The quantitative methods consist of analysis of the students’ logs, the performed tests and assignment grades. The analysis of questionnaires is part of the qualitative method. In this work we also performed an evaluation of the modularity and extensibility of the GALE system as part of the concern in having such a system with a single core adaptation engine that can be extended in order to use it for different types of adaptation. This thesis also presents tools for the analysis of navigation logs and test and quiz results of adaptive courses in GALE. The main goal of these tools is to assist the courses’ authors to retrieve statistical measurements for their own courses, allowing them to analyze the structure of the course from the point of view of the students’ navigation. At the end we discuss future work, and in particular suggest changes to the setup of GALE (for developers that needs to extend the system) and to the structure of hypertext courses based on the observed student behavior as well as the student feedback.