COFALE: An Authoring System for Creating Web-based Adaptive Learning EnvironmentsSupporting Cognitive Flexibility

Constructivism is a learning theory that states that people learn by actively constructing their own knowledge, based on prior knowledge. A significant number of ICT-based constructivist learning systems have been proposed in recent years. A critical problem related to the design and use of this kind of systems has been the lack of a practical means to facilitate the instructional design process. Our research aims to help designing truly constructivist and adaptive learning environments. Our approach is based on a set of operational criteria for certain aspects of constructivism: We use these criteria as a useful pedagogical framework to provide tools and guidelines facilitating the instructional design process. One facet often mentioned as being strongly relevant to constructivism is cognitive flexibility. This paper presents COFALE—a new, domain-independent, and open-source elearning platform that could be used to build adaptive learning environments supporting cognitive flexibility—and an example of its use: the design of a course on recursion.