A comparative analysis of metaheuristics applied to adaptive curriculum sequencing

Abstract

The effective adoption of online learning depends on user satisfaction as distance education approaches suffer from a lack of commitment that may lead to failures and dropouts. The adaptive learning literature argues that an alternative to achieve student satisfaction is to treat them individually, delivering the educational content in a personalized manner. In addition, the sequencing of this content—called Adaptive Curriculum Sequencing (ACS)—is important to avoid cognitive overload and disorientation. The search for an optimal sequence from ever-growing databases is an NP-Hard combinatorial optimization problem. Although some approaches have been proposed, it is challenging to assess their contributions due to the lack of benchmark data available. This paper presents a procedure to create synthetic dataset to evaluate ACS approaches and, as a concept proof, analyzes metaheuristics usually used in ACS approaches: Genetic Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Prey–Predator Algorithm using student’s learning goals and their extrinsic and intrinsic information. We also propose an approach based on Differential Evolution (DE). The computational experiments include synthetic datasets with a varied amount of learning materials and real-world datasets for comparison. The results show that DE performed better than the other methods when less than 500 learning materials are used while PSO performed better for larger problems.

Research Landscape of Adaptive Learning in Education: A Bibliometric Study on Research Publications from 2000 to 2022

“…The two methods intersect in concepts but are not coincident, and both are applied in adaptive learning research, providing the optimal solution for the recommendation of adaptive learning resources. Up until now, related studies based on the two algorithms were still important parts of adaptive learning research [108].…”

Integração de soluções de Sequenciamento Curricular Adaptativo ao Moodle

“…Uma alternativa proposta na literatura de AA trata os alunos de forma individual, com conteúdo personalizado [Martins et al 2021]. O SCA é uma metodologia que atende bem essa func ¸ão, seguindo as ideias de recomendac ¸ão e propondo sequências de conteúdo adequadas para os alunos, reduzindo a desorientac ¸ão e sobrecarga cognitiva.…”

“…O anotador conta com apoio da ontologia DBpedia e cálculos de similaridade. O anotador utilizado é o mesmo do framework de [Martins et al 2021], que extrai metadados de videoaulas através de reconhecimento de fala. Os conceitos selecionados são apresentados ao professor para confirmar a selec ¸ão, sem tirar a liberdade de acrescentar outros.…”

“…O modelo de DSR adotado conta com investigac ¸ão do estado da arte, levantamento das tecnologias semelhantes e elicitac ¸ão dos requisitos do software científico. O artefato resultante é um plugin para o Moodle, trabalhando como middleware de um SCA de [Martins et al 2021].…”

E-learning and social media: Using Facebook to create an online community among applied social practice postgraduate students during a COVID-19 lockdown

“…In e-learning, sequencing is about ensuring that chunks of content are arranged in a way that makes sense (Swangla et al, 2021). The effective sequencing of information helps learners to avoid cognitive overexertion and disorientation (Martins et al, 2021). Furthermore, successful sequencing is characterised by complementarity between the needs and preferences of the learner on the one hand and learning content properties and pedagogical considerations on the other (Benmesbah et al, 2021).…”