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Adaptive Learning Systems
To subscribe to
the Adaptive Learning Systems Special Interest Community,
Program VisionThe proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program aims to promote U.S. economic growth and competitiveness by supporting high-risk research to accelerate development of net-centric, Web-based instructional systems. The overarching goal is to hasten the development of a national learning infrastructure that permits education and training to be pervasive and precisely tailored to the needs of educators and learners. The program seeks comprehensive solutions which recognize that, in order to properly address user requirements, instructional technologies must be more flexible and scalable with respect to all fundamental aspects of net-centric, Web-based instruction -- content, delivery, search, and quality of service(1). Program GoalsThis vision assumes a decentralized paradigm of instruction where educational resources and services are made available beyond the boundaries of any single institution or discipline. Information technology can play the pivotal role of making resources more malleable and reusable, linking instructors and learners frequently and intensely, while adjusting to their requirements in novel ways, and compensating for limitations imposed by time and geography. Ultimately information technology solutions resulting from this program must foster a demand-oriented market for instruction. If this occurs, the market for educational technologies can be expected to expand far beyond the current bounds. Learners in particular and the economy as a whole will benefit greatly. The term adaptive learning systems best depicts the role that technology can play in correcting problems that have stymied educational technology markets in the past. This program is designed to facilitate the development of technology that will adapt knowledge to the needs of learners. Experience proves that the best way to avoid a mismatch between supply and demand is to deploy technology in response to clearly articulated needs. Unlike any other tool applied to instruction in the past, many of the latest information technologies can comprise the platform of a future learning economy -- where learning experiences are pulled by demand rather than driven by any supply. Thus, if deployed within an open-market paradigm, information technologies can have a positive impact on the accessibility, affordability, and quality challenges that now confront American education and training. The term adaptive also relates to the flexibility and scalability of the envisioned learning system. In the future, content and courseware must be reusable, interoperable and easily organized at many different levels of complexity throughout the on-line instructional environment. Tools for developing instructional content and courseware will need to operate across different platforms and communicate with other tools used to build and manage learning systems. The systems themselves must accommodate numerous and varied learner requirements, needs and objectives. The needs of instructors and instructing organizations must also be addressed. Achieving this level of adaptability will require advances in a wide range of technologies that support diverse training and education tasks. They include but are not limited to authoring systems, multi-sensory interfaces, search technology, and network middleware(2). Continued progress will also be required in software reusability and interoperability, especially for high-bandwidth applications.
Figure 1 summarizes the business and technical goals that must be pursued in order to achieve the program vision. The research agenda of the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program addresses only a small portion of the challenges in extending our national information infrastructure to support learning. Some of the needed technologies are common to many domains. Those not specific to the infrastructure for instruction -- e.g. security, authentication, rights management, pedagogical and learning theory-based modeling, and open standards -- are being addressed elsewhere by various industry, research, and standards groups. This frees the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program to concentrate on high-risk research for the production, delivery, search, and quality of service aspects of instructional content. In addition to this research focus, ATP investment may make a difference in educational technology markets by facilitating the formation of strategic alliances, fostering collaboration across sectors and scientific disciplines, and stimulating additional investment into promising technology sectors. Advances on all of these fronts are required to ensure the emergence of a national learning infrastructure, as well as a learning economy that supports demand-driven education and training. Business Goals. The business goals of the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program are to make instruction more affordable, available, and better adapted to end-user requirements, while maintaining the highest standards of quality. Several barriers now exist to realizing the vision of net-centric, Web-based instruction. They revolve around issues such as reducing the production cost and complexity of instructional software and expanding the range of interactions possible in the on-line world. Advanced technology and the market economy can play a role in reducing these barriers. Good instructional software is complex and costly. It requires in-depth pedagogical knowledge, subject matter expertise, and software development skill. Information technology can help to change this. The right tools and the availability of a vast quantity of learning materials easily accessible via the network will make content production quicker and less costly. Information technology can also help to focus instructor inputs where they add the greatest value to learning. It can increase the ability of students to find and use learning materials on their own. By using technology to involve a wider variety of people in teaching (i.e., domain experts) and by freeing educators from routine instructional tasks, we can free those with proven instructional abilities to devote a greater portion of their time to achieving instructional effectiveness. Thus, in simple but profound ways such as these, information technology can make for more cost-effective instruction. Another challenge is to adapt instruction more completely and precisely to learner requirements. Learners and educators alike need instructional systems that accommodate different styles of interaction. Interfaces and the transactions they support must be tailored more precisely to instructional tasks, materials, and learner competence. As educational technology products become more pervasive, instructional opportunities must extend beyond the desktop paradigm and page-turning metaphor. Innovation to adapt technology more completely to diverse user communities will allow those communities to grow and markets to expand because more people will be able to accomplish practical tasks with networked computers. As these changes occur, future generations of instructional software will continue to employ widely-used current technologies -- such as the personal computer or the television or the Internet - but will build on those platforms to achieve more sophisticated instructional ends. With respect to the accessibility of educational products and systems, many educational and training experiences are simply not available when and where they are needed. They need to be more accessible. The diffusion of learning technologies is likely to accelerate as the value of these technologies is demonstrated and the frequency of use increases. As one scholar explains: A few television sets are a novelty. One hundred million televisions define a way of life. More scalable software and systems will be required to allow instructional content, as well as more complex educational tools to be used by several people and many different institutions. This diffusion will have positive implications for price and quality. We must also consider the need for infrastructure to support on-line educational components. For a market in high-quality readily-available educational products to emerge, the value chain supplying components must also be developed. This value chain must be rich in services relevant to education and training, as well as highly reliable and substantial in its capacity. It must take full advantage of the World-Wide Web and other networks, such as corporate intranets. Technical Goals. The technical goals of the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program are to enable rapid expansion and increased utilization of net-centric, Web-based learning environments. Many other parties in addition to ATP are addressing various dimensions of this daunting task. Responding to extensive deliberation with industry, ATP is focusing on the development of tools and infrastructure to support content development, production, and distribution. To satisfy the content requirements of on-line learners and educators, solutions must be designed for intense collaboration and must include integrated data resource management, intelligent multimedia authoring, and automated knowledge acquisition, as well as learner-centered and context profiling. To satisfy requirements for distribution, technologies should be fully adapted to use over the Internet and intranets. They must provide efficient performance support to the most complex sorts of interactions (synchronous and asynchronous) involving individuals as well as groups of any size and in virtually any location. Given the current state of Web-based instruction, ATP support to this infrastructure may yield greater spillover benefits than research on technology for learner modeling (i.e., cognitive modeling, multi-sensory interfaces, and neuro- or psycholinguistic modeling) and instructional services (i.e., skills mapping, testing, registration, resource management, and student profiling). The following technical goals are central to the program: (a) to increase the capacity and usability of instructional content production technology; (b) to improve the precision and context-sensitivity of search and retrieval technology; and (c) to improve quality of service levels of distributed, instructional systems. Achieving these goals should help to create a Web-based learning environment that is scalable, manageable, and usable by a diverse end-user population. It must permit this population to participate in the widest conceivable range of multimedia, multi-sensory, and interactive learning interactions. Research sponsored by the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program is expected to yield breakthroughs that eventually will be commercialized in key product areas. They include intelligent authoring systems and other applications that can dramatically reduce the cost and time to market for educational content. Knowledge management and multi-sensory interface technology - such as intelligent agents, navigation tools, collaborative systems and embedding devices - may also stem from this program, especially where they improve the delivery of instructional opportunities when needed and where needed. Large-scale modular components, instructional frameworks and middleware that can ensure high usability and reliability in networked learning environments are other likely research spin-offs. Software applications originating from this program may also support services to enable a wide variety of learning-oriented transactions.
 Figure 2: Some Basic Components of Adaptive Learning Systems
Program ScopeThe Advanced Technology Program supports research on high risk enabling technologies in response to proposals that convincingly demonstrate the ability to meet five criteria: scientific and technical merit, broad-based economic benefits, feasible plans for commercialization, organizational commitment, and qualified personnel(3). These same criteria will apply to the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program. Key technical challenges that now confront net-centric, Web-based learning systems fall into four categories: content, delivery, search, and quality of service (using technologies such as tele-presence, virtual reality, and multi-sensory interfaces). These comprise the scope of the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program and are represented in Figure 2, which illustrates the envisioned system. These four research thrusts constitute only a portion of the research challenges now at hand in on-line learning technologies.
Inclusions. This program will only support high-risk technical research to develop adaptive learning systems that support learners and educators in producing instructional content and in managing information in the widest range of net-centric, Web-based learning interactions. Adaptive learning systems developed under this program will emphasize the needs of nonprogrammers, including industry experts, workers, educators and trainers, as well as a diverse pool of end-users. ("End-users" targeted by these systems include both learners and educators or trainers.) In addition, the desired adaptive learning systems should: (a) be designed for an open environment of components and modular services; (b) support synchronous and asynchronous interaction; (c) permit frequent upgrading and reuse of courseware and on-line services; (d) optimize use of the network, data center/server, and desktop; (e) balance consideration for learner interests and competencies with educational objectives and cost; (f) be adapted to varied and changing user needs, as well as diverse contexts; (g) be reusable and easily integrated with other systems; (h) demonstrate ways to reduce the burden on learners and educators without compromising educational quality. In addition, proposals for tools, systems and infrastructure are strongly encouraged if they can (a) incorporate instructional paradigms with proven effectiveness; (b) address the training and self-development requirements of the American workforce; and (c) employ innovative net-centric, Web-based business models for the delivery of education and training. Proposals for funding under the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program should consider all key dimensions of net-centric, Web-based learning systems: content production, modes of delivery, search and retrieval, and quality of service. While a proposal may concentrate on one or a combination of these challenges, the proposal should be compatible with technology developments in all areas. Consortia that assemble various parties around a multifaceted research effort are strongly encouraged to participate, especially if this allows ATP resources to be focused on a narrowly defined research challenge while leveraging the investment against other resources. In addition, while a portion of the work required to achieve the aims of this program involves systems integration, commercial viability may depend on the ability to develop packaged software in key areas, such as those to support non-programmer authors of instructional content or enhance the service layer in educational networks. Proposers should keep in mind, however, that ATP will not fund the development of commercial products - only the R&D necessary to overcome technical barriers. Exclusions. The Advanced Technology Program adheres to strict guidelines with respect to the definition of enabling technologies and other criteria associated with successful innovation. In addition to the constraints imposed by these guidelines, certain exclusions directly related to adaptive learning systems will apply. The scope of the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program excludes (a) single-point, stand-alone, or unscalable solutions, (b) technologies incompatible with collaboration and distributed access, or (c) projects that fail to support and demonstrate measurable gains in affordability, accessibility, time-to-market, usability, and/or scalability. The program regards affordable, available, and user-adapted instruction as essential to successful learning. As a technology program, however, the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program does not intend to pass judgement with respect to pedagogy or learning theory. Rather it will work to build out the infrastructure that makes a broad range of learning experiences possible for a large, diverse population of learners and educators. RationaleInformation technology (IT) is an essential resource in delivering and managing our nation's education and training resources. A vast storehouse of such technologies relevant to learning is available. Although much research remains to be done to develop them into market-worthy solutions, these technologies have the potential to transform the learning enterprise to the benefit of learners and educators alike. Over time, these technologies can grow to support an open, widely distributed, high-capacity, and intensely interactive learning infrastructure. Successfully harnessing the potential of information technology for education and training could surmount current barriers to education and training. Information technology has the potential to reduce the costs and time for producing and disseminating educational content, improve learner performance and workplace productivity, increase the size and diversity of the on-line educational community, offer unique learning experiences that fully engage and support users, and improve the accessibility of instruction as well as the functioning of the systems by which instruction is delivered. To enable a revolution in the delivery of education and training, systems that provide learning opportunities must become accessible and affordable. They must also be adapted to the needs of end users in more comprehensive ways. In scaling to satisfy the needs of an ever-larger and more diverse population of learners, these systems must remain reliable and they must accommodate increasingly complex and interactive instructional activities. These intensifying needs for affordable, accessible, and adaptable educational resources surpass the capabilities of today's technologies. Today's educational technologies are inadequate for several reasons. Huge investments have been made in IT-based instruction, only to yield static and rigid content. Too often, courseware has been isolated to point solutions. Rarely have content and courseware been sufficiently reusable. Current knowledge management tools are rigid or disjointed and today's search technology is not sufficiently precise to support even a small portion of learning and teaching tasks. High cost, usability barriers, low reliability, and the rigidity of on-line instructional systems, have prevented users from gravitating to network-based instruction. Even today, the majority of education and training is delivered in classroom-style according to fixed schedules. Unless such weaknesses in current IT-based technologies are addressed, they will be underutilized and limited in their pedagogical value. Thus, the full potential of information technology to improve education and training will not be realized without further high-risk research. This research must produce enabling technologies that allow rapid and extensive migration by both institutions and individual learners to net-centric, Web-based ways of teaching and learning. It is imperative that the Internet and the rapidly proliferating intranets that comprise our national information infrastructure be fully utilized as a platform to facilitate learning. U.S. Economic BenefitThe proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program will accelerate extension of the national information infrastructure to serve as a National Learning Information Infrastructure(4). ATP investment is designed to correct market failures that now slow the development and commercialization of net-centric, Web-based instructional systems. In turn, this should foster the growth and development of a widely distributed and intensely interactive educational economy that makes high-quality education more accessible and affordable to a broad range of Americans. Information technology is an essential resource for tackling the education and training challenges that now face industry and the nation as a whole. It can improve learner performance and productivity. Studies reveal that children are capable of learning at dramatically higher levels in IT-enabled environments. Adult workers also perform better when aided by information technology(5). In fact, recent economic analysis shows the contribution of information technology to firm-level productivity is now measurable in virtually all sectors where it is broadly adopted(6). Information technology allows us to deliver more information to more people at less cost. Information technology has shown great promise in making training more accessible to small and medium-scale enterprises. Advances in information technology herald the dawn of a new age in communications, which can bestow untold advantage to learners, as well as those in the education and training industry. Due to our nation's strengths in both software innovation and education, for example, new instructional systems have great potential to expand both domestic and export markets. Yet as a nation, we are not where we need to be in applying information technology to strengthen education and training. The development of our national information infrastructure to support learning has not kept pace with other sectors, such as health care. In general, markets for instructional technology have been slow to develop in higher education and corporate America alike. Even though many of the necessary conditions are present, an active educational marketplace suited to our future knowledge-based economy has not yet emerged. Market failures persist. US corporations spend less than either their European or their Japanese counterparts on training. Perhaps because education in the U.S. has historically been a public good, end-users are often reluctant to pay the true costs of education. Many assume the public sector will supplement educational costs indefinitely. In addition, value is being lost. Much of the know-how generated through education and training activities -- e.g., expert worker knowledge, laboratory techniques, lectures and elements of curricula - is not captured in reusable electronic media. Thus, commercialization attempts fail and valuable spillovers bleed out of educational institutions. Educational markets are also failing where workers neglect to upgrade their skills for lack of on-the-job access. The industry-led Council on Competitiveness(7) has identified four conditions which hinder information technology and the national information infrastructure from playing a larger role in education and training: acceptance, affordability, ease of use, and the regulatory environment. Seed investments of the sort offered by ATP may foster broad-based commercialization of educational technologies. They have the potential to help correct current market failures. Such investments are most likely to pay off if directed at improving the specific conditions targeted by the council's report. Widespread commercialization and diffusion of educational technology is more feasible than in the past for several reasons. The national information infrastructure is rapidly becoming a reality and other networking technologies are rapidly coming into place. Sixty-eight percent of public school students now have access to the Internet and this number is growing by as much as 15% each year(8). Although much of the educational infrastructure has been largely financed by public funds, private investment and restructuring in telecommunications are complementing this investment in significant ways. While this infrastructure establishes the platform for educational technologies, the market for applications and services to ride atop this platform is still in its infancy. Yet, almost in response to these conditions, higher education is taking a fresh look at its cost structure and has begun to consider information technology as an ever-more essential tool in capturing intangible value and controlling costs. Educational leaders state that future software commercialization activities are highly likely to be coordinated with private industry(9). Corporate America and the Federal government alike are striving to reduce training costs, while improving their ability to produce positive training outcomes without a loss of productivity. Today we have arrived at a point where virtually all stakeholders are demanding more educational value for less money. Under such circumstances, the future lies in technologies that stretch far beyond traditional pedagogical approaches. They include such solutions as multimedia-based learning systems, collaborative environments, learning simulation tools, interfaces adapted to diverse users, and immersion-based and interactive simulation systems. Educational environments of the future will require functionality that has previously been unimaginable, even in sectors such as health care where networking around complex tasks is well established. Although much remains to be done, these technologies will allow educators and trainers to meet future demands: provide high quality education and training at reduced cost; deliver educational resources when needed, where needed, and in the form needed; adjust to shortages and differences in levels of preparedness among both students and educators; tailor curriculum to the diverse needs of the gifted, impaired, under-prepared, or disadvantaged; ensure greater continuity between school and work. These technologies can also foster the growth of a widely distributed and intensely interactive educational economy. Industry CommitmentIndustry commitment to and the need for this proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program have been confirmed through direct industry inputs (i.e., white paper submissions and attendance at direction-setting workshops); participation in previous solicitations; and four independent market assessments. These confirm industrial support for the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program. They also demonstrate that ATP investment offers an unduplicated means of expanding educational technologies markets by reducing key technical barriers that are obstructing new entrants from among both producers and consumers of IT-based instructional products and services. Communications with Industry. Since June 1994, over 48 white papers have been submitted to ATP on some aspect of educational technology. Those who submitted these papers represent a balanced mix of business and technical professionals from a diverse array of private firms, universities, and research institutions. This document reflects the contents of those white papers, as well as the outcomes of three direction-setting workshops. First, a Workshop on Learning Technologies was held in Washington DC in October 1994. Over 218 participants attended that event. Together the attendees identified the most pressing research needs in educational technologies. A second workshop was held in Austin, Texas (February 1995). This workshop involved approximately 60 participants in three days of discussion and planning to refine an investment approach for this focused program. Another one-day workshop attended by 134 people was held at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland on December 15, 1997, to further refine the aims and scope of the program. From June to August 1997 authors of many of the original white papers were contacted to determine whether they remained interested in learning technologies as a research field and whether they believed ATP support was still appropriate at this time. All of the individuals and institutions contacted expressed their continued interest in learning technologies. Several provided additional written comments or revised their white papers. Their guidance is consistent with the scope outlined here as the proposed Adaptive Learning Systems Focused Program. Most indicated they would submit a proposal if the proposed program were in operation today or within the coming year. Past ATP Proposals. Even in the absence of a dedicated focused program, ATP has received 26 proposals representing a total of $96.7 million in total project costs for research related to educational technologies. Several of these proposals were funded or brought to final board review. These proposals were primarily from single companies (as opposed to consortia) and offered a total of US$35.2 million in private funds. These figures can be interpreted to mean that there is already demand for ATP support for Adaptive Learning Systems and that it is drawing credible proposals. With a focused program, ATP should expect even more proposals of equal or greater quality due to a synergy that propels the program forward. By committing to this field, ATP should also expect to increase the value of its investment. Market Assessments. There are several pathways by which the educational technology industry may develop in the future. Given the ever-increasing importance of learning in our global knowledge economy, most pathways lead towards deepening and expansion of this emerging industry. They thus hold significant promise of US economic benefit. However, projections vary widely regarding the pace of growth and full potential of these markets. Market forecasts often avoid postulations about growth due to horizontal linkages and spillovers, such as might occur in the presence of a technological breakthrough. ATP-investment targets precisely those technological barriers which industry is striving to overcome. Doing so has the potential to greatly expand or accelerate market potential. Four independent studies looked at educational technology markets from different perspectives. A Dataquest study looked at technology use in public education and found a $5.7 billion technology market that was growing at the rate of about $6.5% each year(10). The Annual Industry Report of 1996 by Lakewood Research assessed corporate training and estimated the technology portion of this market at $ 7.6 billion in 1995-96 and projected a real growth rate of 9% per annum(11). Finally, another Dataquest study looked directly at multimedia technology in educational settings (both corporate and institutional)(12). It assessed the market for educational technologies as $16.6 billion today with a growth rate approaching 14%. Finally, a forecasting model of Adaptive Learning Systems markets developed by Nathan Associates for ATP(13) suggested still greater potential. The model predicted that sales of instructional software and systems would range between $25.8 and 42.2 billion by conservative estimates. More optimistic projections indicate that educational technologies may grow to as much as $142.9 billion by 2005. These outcomes are more likely if certain of the barriers identified in this paper are reduced.
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