The narrative approach to personalisation

Abstract

This article describes the narrative approach to personalisation. This novel approach to the generation of personalised adaptive hypermedia experiences employs runtime reconciliation between a personalisation strategy and a number of contextual models (e.g. user and domain). The approach also advocates the late binding of suitable content and services to the generated personalised pathway resulting in an interactive composition that comprises services as well as content. This article provides a detailed definition of the narrative approach to personalisation and showcases the approach through the examination of two use-cases: the personalised digital educational games developed by the ELEKTRA and 80Days projects; and the personalised learning activities realised as part of the AMAS project. These use-cases highlight the general applicability of the narrative approach and how it has been applied to create a diverse range of real-world systems.

Keywords:

• Personalisation
• Narrative
• Adaptive hypermedia
• eLearning

Acknowledgements

This research is co-funded by Science Foundation Ireland as part of the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (Grant 07/CE/I1142) and the AMAS project (Grant 08/IN.1/I2103) and the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission as part of the CULTURA project (Grant 269973) at Trinity College Dublin.

Notes

1. For AMAS SFI project refer to http://kdeg.cs.tcd.ie/amas.