An open model for learning path construction

Learning path construction is a complex task. It involves formulating and organizing learning activities, defining ways to evaluate student learning progress and to match such progress with designated learning outcome requirements. Existing methods for adaptive learning path construction typically consider knowledge elements (KEs) as the building blocks and offer mechanisms to select and schedule relevant KEs to form a learning path. However, as KEs may involve variety of delivery and assessment methods, relying on KEs to form building blocks can make learning path construction difficult. To avoid this problem, existing methods restrict KEs to be delivered only through "lecturing" and "question-answering" activities, even though such a restriction greatly affects the usefulness of these methods. In this paper, we propose an open model to formulate learning paths and learning activities. This model can lead to the implementation of a generic system to support learning path design for teachers from any subject disciplines. We have developed a prototype based on this model and conducted a user study to evaluate its effectiveness. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.