What Do Academic Users Really Want from an Adaptive Learning System?

Harrigan, M., Kravčík, M., Steiner, Ch., & Wade, V. (2009). What Do Academic Users Really Want from an Adaptive Learning System?. In G.-J. Houben, G. McCalla, F. Pianesi & M. Zancanaro (Eds.), User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference, UMAP 2009 (pp. 454-460). June, 22-26, 2009, Trento, Italy: Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 5535. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.When developing an Adaptive Learning System (ALS), users are generally consulted (if at all) towards the end of the development cycle. This can limit users’ feedback to the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the system at hand. It can be difficult to extrapolate principles and requirements, common to all ALSs, that are rated highly by users. To address this problem, we have elicited requirements from learners and teachers across several European academic institutions through explorative, semi-structured interviews [1]. The goal was to provide a methodology and an appropriate set of questions for conducting such interviews and to capture the essential requirements for the early iterations of an ALS design. In this paper we describe the methodology we employed while preparing, conducting, and analyzing the interviews and we present our findings along with objective and subjective analysis.This work was performed within the EU FP7 GRAPPLE (Generic Responsive Adaptive Personalized Learning Environment) Project. The authors would like to acknowledge the help of the following people in organizing and conducting the interviews: Françoise Docq (Université Catholique de Louvain), Maurice Hendrix (University of Warwick), Riccardo Mazza (Università della Svizzera Italiana), Luca Mazzola (Università della Svizzera Italiana), Ekaterina Pechenezhskaya (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), Bram Pellens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Kees van der Sluijs (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), and Dominique Verpoorten (Open Universiteit Nederland)