Application of Hypermedia Systems in e-Learning

Thesis Abstract

This book focuses on a very progressive trend in the field of e-learning – that of adaptive hypermedia e-learning systems. It starts with a brief explanation of the term e-learning, its importance in the current educational world, and an explanation of the notion of adaptivity in this context. Adaptivity solves many drawbacks of current static e-learning systems, namely the one size fits all and lost-in-hyperspace phenomena. The first chapter explains the main principles of adaptivity and previews several studies discussing the benefits of adaptivity in an e-learning system. The second chapter is devoted to an extensive review of existing adaptive e-learning applications. It reviews 31 existing systems, outlining their most important features and contributions to the field and mentions 43 other systems, covering the current situation and development in the topic almost completely. The third chapter overviews the current state of standardization in this area, summary of existing efforts. The fourth chapter consolidates the knowledge of the previous two, and discusses the current development trends and most recent findings. Finally, the fifth chapter proposes a design of a new adaptive hypermedia elearning system based on the collected knowledge, and discusses the most important concepts and implementation paths.