Adaptive Environment Supporting Understanding and Learning from Texts in Informatics (ADULT)

The aim of this paper is to present the design of an adaptive environment supporting understanding and learning from texts in informatics (ADULT). It is a three-stage system. In the first stage examines studentspsila background knowledge using a questionnaire concerning the knowledge in the general domain of the current text. In the second stage the system proposes to the reader the appropriate text according to his score in the background knowledge questionnaire. ADULT uses four versions of a text, orthogonally varying local and global coherence. In the third stage, participantspsila comprehension is assessed through free-recall measure, text-based, bridging-inference and problem solving questions and a sorting task. The system suggests the previous learning sequence; however the student can set his own sequence. The design of such an environment is appropriate for personalized learning and is based on the results of previous studies which demonstrated that high and low knowledge readers benefit from low- and high coherence texts respectively.