ATS-adaptive teaching system a WWW-based ITS

Adaptive Teaching System (ATS) is a WWW based tutoring system, which combines methods of knowledge representation, instructional planning and adaptive media generation to deliver individualized courseware over the WWW. ATS uses the CL-HTTP hypermedia server (Mallery, 1994) for generate this individualized courseware. The system is based on a domain model of the subject matter, a didactical model on how to teach a curriculum and learner modeling on different levels, e.g. preferences, interests, knowledge. Based on these three components individualized Web content (html, java, pictures) is generated and presented to the learners (M. Specht et al., 1997). Taking into account the interest and the knowledge of a learner, the system can adapt different aspects of the instructional process, e.g. adapting the curriculum by selection of content, adapting the presentation of contents by choosing appropriate media and combining them, adapting the teaching strategies for specific contents, annotating hyperlinks, recommending appropriate hyperlinks and contents. Some adaptive methods used in ATS have been empirically evaluated and showed improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of learning compared to classical static hypermedia learning environments