EC-TEL'2009 Workshop "Learning Management Systems meet Adaptive Learning Environments"

The research and development of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Adaptive Learning Environments (ALE) remained disconnected for a long time. The most popular LMSs like Moodle, Sakai or Blackboard still do not support personalization as found in existing adaptive educational hypermedia systems and applications. However, recently some initiatives were started to bridge the gap between the worlds of LMSs and ALEs. Researchers are extending user profiles of existing LMSs and introducing personalization functionality into different modules of LMSs. Likewise researchers of ALEs are finding ways to integrate their ALE within existing LMSs.
Efforts in this direction are found mostly in European research projects, including (but not limited to) the Socrates-Minerva project "Adaptive Learning Spaces" and the FP7 project GRAPPLE. The aim of this workshop is to bring researchers together who are working on any aspect of the whole problem area of bringing adaptation and personalization into LMSs, including adaptation to individual goals, knowledge, learning styles and context of use as well as adaptation to group characteristics and goals and tasks of groups doing collaborative work.
The goal of the workshop is to move forward and join the efforts on the integration of personalization and adaptive technology into LMSs. The main objectives are: to share the experience of introducing personalization and adaptation into existing LMS and to summarize the current findings in this area, to foster interaction and exchange of ideas, and, to discuss the challenges and the important issues to be solved and to provide an opportunity for information exchange and possible future research collaboration.

Topics of Interest

The focus of the workshop will be on the design challenges to introduce personalization into an LMS by means of integration of or communication with an ALE. By bringing together designers of LMSs and researchers in adaptive hypermedia and adaptive learning systems this workshop aims to create a forum to share ideas about how to introduce personalization and adaptation into an LMS.

Topics likely to be discussed at this workshop include, but are not limited to:

• Personalization in the LMS: What kind of personalization do the existing LMSs support and how it can be improved? How can the functionality of existing LMS be extended by additional functionality of personalized systems?
• Sharing User Models: Both LMSs and ALEs maintain information about users. How can they exchange information and how can they understand each other's information?
• Adaptation based on shared User Models: How can, for instance, an LMS offer feedback to tests based on the ALE's user model, or how can an ALE use test results from the LMS in adaptation?
• Effectiveness of personalization in LMS: How to evaluate effectiveness of personalization in the LMS+ALE combination?

The intended workshop especially welcomes submissions that report on work in progress and demo-papers that report developments and implementation of different types of adaptation in LMS+ALE systems.

We realize that the topic of authoring adaptive learning applications is equally interesting and especially challenging when an LMS and ALE are combined. However, a separate workshop will be organized at EC-TEL dealing with authoring as the sole topic.

Target audience

The workshop is targeted at researchers working towards or just interested in state-of-the art on the use, design of personalized technology-enhanced learning systems. Academics and teachers who are truly engaged in the process of discovering effective, and often innovative, technology-mediated teaching and learning practices are also most welcome. Finally, this workshop is aimed at the users of learning management systems and companies that develop them that want to keep abreast with the newest developments in personalization and adaptive technology.

Moreover, the workshop is also targeted at people who are interested to hear and discuss the current challenges of personalization in TEL. We encourage them to participate actively in the discussions for which time will be especially allocated, as well as in the other interactive sections, such as demos. The workshop’s main aim is to bring together researchers and practitioners working or interested in the fields of educational technology and adaptive learning environments.

Participants are expected to leave with a better knowledge of the state of the art of the field, as well as to have a fruitful brain-storming session generating new ideas and opening new paths. Results of the discussions will be posted after the workshop on-line on the workshop site.

Paper Submission

All submissions will be handled electronically. Please submit your contribution (up to 10 pages in LNCS format) before the submission deadline (July 1, 2009) to the workshop co-chairs by e-mail: e.vasilyeva@tue.nl, debra@win.tue.nl. Each submission will be reviewed by at least two members of the workshop programme committee. All accepted workshop papers will be published in the online workshop proceedings edited by the workshop chairs.

Important dates

Workshop Program, Accepted Papers and Presentations

Related(Co-located) Events

• September, 29, 9:00-13:00
  WS 9: A3H: Seventh International Workshop on Authoring of Adaptive and Adaptable Hypermedia
  Organizers: Alexandra Cristea and Rosa M. Carro
• September, 30, 9:00-17:00
  Tutorial: Creating and Delivering Adaptive Course Material through GRAPPLE
  Organizer: Paul de Bra

Workshop organization

Workshop Co-Chairs:

Program Committie

For more information, please email e.vasilyeva{AT}tue.nl.