1. Adaptive Book: A Platform for teaching, learning and student modeling Ananda Gunawardena School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University

2. About Me  I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University  My Research Focus is on creating smart, usable and adaptable learning environments  My work draw from many areas of computer science including Human Computer Interaction and Data Mining.  This semester I am doing an interesting Tablet PC pilot project at Education City in Qatar (with HP4200’s).

3. Here I am near a Qatar Sand Dune Sept 30, 2005

4. Outline  Introduction  What is Adaptive Book?  Adaptive Book Authoring Tools  Just in time learning modules  Adaptive Markup Repository  Student Behavior Modeling  Pilot Results  Future Work

5. 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 is a platform for customization, personalization and understanding of student behavior

6. Adaptive Book  A software platform developed in C# /.net –Developed by TextCentric,Inc (CMU Spin-off)  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, archiving and searching markups –AB combines textbook content with all other related material

7. Adaptive Book UI

8. Creating an Adaptive Book  Adaptive Book is a thin client program  Any SCORM/IMS content package can be imported into Adaptive Book  An authoring tool creates these content packages.  In other words anyone can create an Adaptive Book package using their own content and/or textbook chapters

9. Adaptive Book Authoring Tool  Uses a HTML/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

10. Importing a SCO

11. Markup Concept  Markup is a semantically related set of objects consists of highlights, annotations and web links.  Markups automatically generate its own metadata as well as anyone can add other metadata to markups before saving  Markups are stored in a searchable repository.  Search and find markups related to a certain concept –What is the “best” markup to learn topic A? –Google type search engine  Assign Rights to markups –Private, public, protected

12. Sample Markup

13. Students Sign up for Markup Services

14. Students can create buddy groups

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

16. Mark-up List

17. Assigning Rights to Markups

18. Reading a markup

19. 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 markup object  Save the markup to a customized learning objects (CLO) repository  Others can search and find the markup, disassemble and customize to their needs

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

21. More on Markups  Markups with learning paths can be created by individual instructors  Search and find the Markup, and import the to Adaptive Book

22. 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

23. Modeling Student Behavior  One of the focuses of our research –Do students read the book and other notes? –If so, what do they read? not pages, what specific content? –How do they construct knowledge?  Does the Tablet PC help students move from informal sketching to formalization? –What can we do to capture that?

24. Modeling Student Behavior  If we are successful in capturing an accurate assessment of student thinking, what can we do with that data?  Our pilots involve constructing activities that “requires” the student to show specific things in the textbook and notes that they found useful  Student markup is then compared to an “expert” markup  Our preliminary data show some interesting correlation between student performance and their perception of what was important in completing the assignment  More work is needed to accurately model student behavior  This is ongoing research

25. Markup Analysis Model Student 4 Student 2 Student 3 Student 5 Expert Student 1 Student 6

26. Pilot Results  We have used Adaptive Book and markup repository with several institutions and middle schools  Many positive Student Comments but lot needs to be done  Interesting results on what students read  Sample comments…

27. 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”

28. Adaptive Book Resources  Many Useful links from project site –http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab  See project site for latest updates and interesting demos

29. Future Work  More focus on the impact of Tablet PC and Adaptive Book Technology  Making Adaptive Book a research platform for modeling student behavior  Creating a dynamic sketch environment for conceptual understanding and automatic code generation  Informal to formal stages of learning  Better markup analysis and classification

30. Questions: guna@cs.cmu.edu Thank You guna@cs.cmu.edu