| Description |
The organization of learning materials is often limited by the systems available for delivery of such material. Currently, the learning management system (LMS) is widely used to distribute course materials. These systems deliver the material in a text-based, linear way. As online education continues to expand and educators seek to increase their effectiveness by adding more effective active learning strategies, these delivery methods become a limitation. This work demonstrates the possibility of presenting course materials in a graphical way that expresses important relations and provides support for manipulating the order of those materials. The ENABLE system gathers data from an existing course, uses text analysis techniques, graph theory, graph transformation, and a user interface to create and present graphical course maps. These course maps are able to express information not currently available in the LMS. Student agents have been developed to traverse these course maps to identify the variety of possible paths through the material. The temporal relations imposed by the current course delivery methods have been replaced by prerequisite relations that express ordering that provides educational value. Reducing the connections to these more meaningful relations allows more possibilities for change. Technical methods are used to explore and calibrate linear and nonlinear models of learning. These methods are used to track mastery of learning material and identify relative difficulty values. Several probability models are developed and used to demonstrate that data from existing, temporally based courses can be used to make predictions about student success in courses using the same material but organized without the temporal limitations. Combined, these demonstrate the possibility of tools and techniques that can support the implementation of a graphical course map that allows varied paths and provides an enriched, more informative interface between the educator, the student, and the learning material. This fundamental change in how course materials are presented and interfaced with has the potential to make educational opportunities available to a broader spectrum of people with diverse abilities and circumstances. The graphical course map can be pivotal in attaining this transition. |
