Black Box Metadata Creation: The Academic Problem

Abstract

Adaptive learning systems attempt to adapt learning content to suit the needs of the learners using the system. Most adaptive techniques, however, are constrained by the pedagogical preference of the author of the system and are always constrained to the system they were developed for and the domain content. Understanding the environmental constructs of a learning environment is critical to be able to consider adapting content to individual learners. A sample personal profile is described that can be used to automatically generate instructional content to suit the pedagogical preference and cognitive ability of a learner in real time, in an online learning environment. This paper introduces a Content Analyser (CA) that is used to automatically generate metadata to encapsulate cognitive resources within instructional content. The analyser is designed to bridge the perceived gap found within instructional repositories between inconsistent metadata created for instructional content and multiple metadata standards being used. All instructional content that is analysed is repackaged as Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) conforming content.