Implementation of adaptive learning designs

Designing adaptive learning activities, i.e. activities which provide learner-dependant variant learning experiences, is an inherently demanding pedagogical task. Designing adaptive elearning activities should not add disproportionate technical difficulties to the task. IMS-Learning Design purports to provide a pedagogically neutral and technically smooth environment for the design of educationally rich, including adaptive, learning scenarios. However, although IMSLearning Design has been effectively used for adaptive, web-based learning, most teachers and instructional designers consider it to be technically out of their reach. Two examples of IMSLearning Design compliant adaptive web-based learning activities are presented in this paper to show that this is not really the case. Learner profiling and personalization is achieved in adaptive courseware compliant with the IMS-Learning Design specification, including a diagnostic learning style test and an educational recommender system. These components make use of the learning style and prior knowledge respectively, in order to adapt the presentation of the learning material and the feedback given to the learner.