Adaptive Book: Teaching and Learning Environment for Programming Education Ananda Gunawardena & Victor Adamchik

Outline  Introduction  What is Adaptive Book?  Adaptive Book Authoring Tools  Just in time learning modules  Learning Object Repository  Survey Results  Future Work

Introduction  “It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there which generates the greatest satisfaction”  Carl Fredrick Gauss

Introduction  Effective teaching is not confined to the classroom—it is successful when it enhances interest and generates thinking beyond the classroom setting.  A great deal of customization and personalization of the content is needed to generate the interest  Adaptive Book delivery platform for customization and personalization

Adaptive Book  A software platform developed in C# /.net –Developed by TextCentric,Inc  Research Base at Carnegie Mellon –Usability (Human Computer Interaction) –Adaptive (Machine Learning)  Adaptive Book User Interface –Navigation, search, markup tools (highlighting, annotating, and linking), book marking –Labeling and saving markups –Access to all components of a course

Adaptive Book UI

Creating an Adaptive Book  Adaptive Book is a thin client  Any SCORM/IMS content package can be imported to Adaptive Book  We have an authoring tool to create these content packages

Adaptive Book Authoring Tool  Uses a XML content repository to find chapters of the book and supplements  Each chapter of the book is tagged as a Sharable Content Object (SCO)  Uses a simple drag and drop menu to select the chapters and supplements needed to create the custom book  Program generates the table of content and package the book as a SCO

Importing a SCO

Markup Concept  Markup is a semantically related set of objects consists of highlights, annotations and web links.  Add metadata to markups before closing  Search and find markups related to a certain concepts  Assign Rights to markups

Students Sign up for Markup Services

Students Define their buddy group or Who has the access to their markups

Students can create buddy groups

Mark-up List

Assigning Rights to Markups

Reading a markup

Just in time Learning Modules  Instructors can create just in time learning modules using markup tools  Select content, highlight, place sticky notes and URL’s and package them as a SCORM object  Save the markup to a customized learning objects (CLO) repository  Others can search and find the markup, disassemble and customize to their needs

A Just-in-time learning module with highlights, and digital ink notes

More on CLO’s  Customized learning objects can be created by individual instructors  Search and find the CLO, and import the CLO as a markup to Adaptive Book

Learning Objects Repository  Three types of learning objects stored in the repository  Book Chapters that can be used to build a custom book  Individual markups packaged as IMS/SCORM with access rights  Customized Learning Objects (CLO’s) that can be retrieved and modified using Adaptive Book

Survey Results  We have used Adaptive Book with custom learning objects with many programming students  This semester we are running a tablet PC pilot, sponsored by HP  Many positive Student Comments but lot needs to be done  Sample comments…

Some Student Comments  “I like the ability to find a relevant markup that can help solve some of the programming problems”  “It is nice to receive markups from the instructor before the lecture”  “Good thing about the Adaptive Book is that instructor can create a markup linking textbook concepts and relevant programming examples”  “receiving an answer to a FAQ as a markup is a very useful feature”  “Adaptive Book search feature needs improvements”

Adaptive Book Resources  Many Useful links from project site –  See project site for latest updates and interesting demos

Future Work  More focus on the impact of Tablet PC and Adaptive Book on programming education  Creating a dynamic sketch environment for conceptual understanding and automatic code generation  Markup analysis and classification  Questions:  Thank You