Automated Acquisition of Domain Model for Adaptive Collaborative Web-Based Learning

Adaptive features of web-based educational systems bring substantial advantages for learners. Educational system instruction is adopted to their individual needs resulting in more efficient learning. Adaptation engine responsible for advanced functionality in the educational system relies on the domain model semantically describing subject domain. Quantity of domain descriptions and amount of user-generated data make manual creation and maintenance of semantic descriptions demanding and almost impossible task. In our work we tackled a problem of domain model automated acquisition. We proposed lightweight domain model with respect to acquisition facilitation, together with methods for acquisition of domain model respective parts. We advocate lightweight semantics as suitable form of domain conceptualization for adaptive educational system. In order to evaluate the proposed approach we performed several experiments in the domain of learning programming. We also present case study of lightweight domain modeling in Adaptive LEarning Framework ALEF, which was developed at Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava to support learning for technology oriented courses.