Second‐level Design of a Knowledge‐based Educational Advisor

Abstract

The last few years have seen an increase in open and student‐centred learning. Changing patterns in the requirements and constraints associated with training and education are encouraging a greater emphasis on self‐study packages. However, the inevitable variations between students in terms of their background experience, level of expertise, learning objectives and study styles can lead to problems of specifying efficient study regimes, and in the management of such learning systems. Addressing these issues, an earlier paper in PLET (ETTI) described a prototype version of an adaptable knowledge‐based educational Advisor capable of planning a route through a generalized topic‐based curriculum domain and offering individualized learning advice to the learner. This paper presents an interim report on the more sophisticated second‐level design currently being developed. A set of software tools in Smalltalk has been constructed allowing progressive implementation and refinement of the prototype and the current state of the system is described.