ACE - adaptive courseware environment

The Adaptive Courseware Environment (ACE) is a WWW-based tutoring framework which combines methods of knowledge representation, instructional planning, and adaptive media generation to deliver individualized courseware via the WWW. ACE is based on a domain model of the subject matter, a pedagogical model on how to teach a curriculum, and learner modeling on different levels, e.g., preferences, interests, and knowledge. Based on these three components individualized web-content (HTML, Java, pictures) is generated and presented to the learners. Taking into account the interests and the knowledge of a learner ACE 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, and by recommending appropriate hyperlinks and contents. Currently three systems have been realized on the basis of ACE and adaptive components of each system have been evaluated in empirical studies. Additionally experimental studies of the applied adaptive methods have shown improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of learning compared to classical static hypermedia.