Edu 800 Annotation Week 5.B

Brusilovsky, P (2012) Adaptive hypermedia for education and training. In: Adaptive Technologies for Training and Education. UNSPECIFIED, 46 - 66. 

 Peter Brusilovsky’s article discusses Adaptive hypermedia (AH) is an area of research that combines hypermedia and user modeling. It builds unique models of an individual’s preferences, goals, and knowledge and then uses it to adapt to the users needs throughout the interaction. It is almost like the precursor to all the AI models that we see today. In the article, Brusilovsky discusses a user model that enabled AH to adapt to different users with specific goals in mind; however, this ability was limited to three technologies: adaptive content selection, adaptive navigation support, and adaptive presentation. The article also gives a timeline of AH starting in the early 90’s on up to 2002.

 This article also explained the basic set up of all AEH systems. Overall, they seem to all have a knowledge space called a domain model that is the foundation for structuring a user’s knowledge, a student model, which actually stores an approximation of the user’s content knowledge level for each domain, and some form of knowledge indexing as well. I was not aware that there are so many different adaptive systems with applications that are related to AH. The article lists things like Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), Web-based Education Systems, Learning Management Systems (LMS), and Semantic Web.

This is very technical article! It demonstrates Brusilovsky’s skill and expertise in the field of AH. I am so curious to know more about this area of study. However, I fear it is beyond my depth. This technology was genuinely ahead of its time in so many ways. In the 90s, computers were literally just becoming a thing in schools. There were not even full computer labs, but this technology was around and being perfected to become what it is today. I believe this is the reason that I love technology in education so much. Things that are just an idea can blossom into so much more in a very short amount of time.