Adaptive hypermedia

Adaptive hypermedia (AH) uses hypermedia which is adaptive according to a user model. In contrast to linear media, where all users are offered a standard series of hyperlinks, adaptive hypermedia (AH) tailors what the user is offered based on a model of the user's goals, preferences and knowledge, thus providing links or content most appropriate to the current user.

Adaptive hypermedia is used in educational hypermedia, on-line information and help systems, as well as institutional information systems. Adaptive educational hypermedia tailors what the learner sees to that learner's goals, abilities, needs, interests, and knowledge of the subject, by providing hyperlinks that are most relevant to the user in an effort to shape the user's cognitive load. The teaching tools "adapt" to the learner. On-line information systems provide reference access to information for users with a different knowledge level of the subject.

An adaptive hypermedia system should satisfy three criteria: it should be a hypertext or hypermedia system, it should have a user model and it should be able to adapt the hypermedia using the model.

A semantic distinction is made between adaptation, referring to system-driven changes for personalisation, and adaptability, referring to user-driven changes. One way of looking at this is that adaptation is automatic, whereas adaptability is not. From an epistemic point of view, adaptation can be described as analytic, a-priori, whereas adaptability is synthetic, a-posteriori. In other words, any adaptable system, as it "contains" a human, is by default "intelligent", whereas an adaptive system that presents "intelligence" is more surprising and thus more interesting.

The system categories in which user modelling and adaptivity have been deployed by various researchers in the field share an underlying architecture. The conceptual structure for adaptive systems generally consists of interdependent components: a user model, a domain model and an interaction model.

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