Adaptive training instructional interventions: A meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

The United States military services are modernizing their training and education curricula by leveraging advances in technology to deliver instruction that is more engaging and responsive to trainees’ needs and better prepares them for the future fight. Adaptive training (AT), or training tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of individual trainees, is a promising technique to meet these modernization goals. The research literature, however, is sporadic and does not clearly prescribe best practices for its employment. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effectiveness of various AT instructional interventions (i.e. adapting difficulty, feedback, scaffolding, etc.) on learning outcomes. There were 30 peer-reviewed publications included in the analysis. We grouped studies by the adaptive intervention examined and reported the associated effects on learning outcomes. Overall, the results revealed that the effectiveness of AT varied considerably across the instructional interventions. Specifically, studies that implemented adaptive difficulty techniques were the most effective, followed by adaptive scaffolding and remediation/test-out techniques. Based on these findings, we identify design recommendations for future AT systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptive training
• adaptive instructional systems
• adaptive learning
• instructional strategies
• meta-analysis

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Dr. Peter Squire and the Office of Naval Research for sponsoring this work. We would also like to thank Ms. Gabriela Flores-Cruz, Mr. Steven Ford, and Ms. Cherrise Ficke for their help in gathering and reviewing relevant publications for this meta-analysis, as well as Dr. Wendi Van Buskirk for her feedback on an earlier draft of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research. Presentation of this material does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense (DoD). The opinions of the authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the U.S. Navy or DoD.This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Funding Document [#N0001422WX00487].