Evaluation of the personalisation and adaptability offered by popular e-learning

Common open source and commercial e-learning platforms are known to offer course management facilities for the instructor and learner, but for this project it was felt important to find out how much personalisation or adaptability e- learning platforms actually offer the learner. This therefore led to a further project objective of Òto carry out an evaluation of the personalisation and adaptability offered by e-learning platformsÓ and this evaluation follows. For this research, it was decided to evaluate some of the most commonly used platforms at the time of the research. Therefore, it was decided that the commercial platforms to be evaluated for this study were Blackboard, Intralearn, Angel and Saba and the open source platforms chosen were Moodle, A Tutor, Sakai, LRN and Ilias. The author published this evaluation study in 2009 (see Peter et al (2009)).

The e-learning platform evaluation criteria proposed here is one that extends the evaluation criteria that was proposed by Rego et al. (2007), which is described in Section 3.2.2.

The criteria used for the evaluation extends RegoÕs criteria as it evaluates how much adaptability and personalisation the e-learning platforms actually offer. The evaluation criteria proposed here is grouped within three categories and these categories are Functionality, Adaptability and Personalisation.

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The functionality category evaluates the functionality offered by the e-learning platforms for the instructor to manage course material and sequence and for the instructor to manage and monitor learners. It also evaluates whether the learner is able to search for learning objects.

The adaptability category evaluates whether it is possible to extend the content provided by the e-learning platform so that it can be adapted to the learnerÕs specific needs based on their goals and behaviour. It also evaluates whether the learning content could be provided to the learner based on their specific learning style.

The personalisation category specifically looks at the user interface personalisation, learning style content personalisation, learning style object type (e.g. video file type, podcast file type, PowerPoint file type) personalisation and the also the course structure personalisation available in the e-learning platforms.

Therefore, the evaluation category for this research are proposed as follows: Functionality available (F):

1. The extent to which the instructor can manage course material and sequence (F1)

2. The extent to which the instructor can manage and monitor learners (F2)

3. Whether the learner is able to search for Learning objects (F3) Adaptability (A):

Can they adapt to the learnerÕs specific needs including: 1. The learnerÕs goals (A1)

2. The learnerÕs behaviour (A2) 3. The learnerÕs learning style (A3)

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Can they offer a personalised learning experience including:

1. The extent to which they offer user interface personalisation (P1) 2. Whether the learning content can be provided for their specific learning

need (P2)

3. Whether the learning object type can be provided based on their specific learning needs (P3)

4. The extent to which the course structure is personalised according to their specific requirements (P4)

E-learning platforms evaluation results

The evaluation took place and the following measure was used: 0: none, 1: some but limited, 2: good

The results are summarized in table 3. However, here follows a description of the final evaluation results for each category:

The Functionality category findings:

It was found that all of the platforms offered good tools for the instructor to manage course material and material sequence and also to enable the instructor to manage and monitor learners. Therefore all platforms received the high score of 2 for F1 and F2.

It was also found that three platforms offered some kind of learning object search for the learner. Specifically, A Tutor, Ilias and Saba offer the sharing of learning objects, however, although this is possible it does not allow for the learner to be provided with them within a learning package and additionally a limited search criteria was available for this object search. With this in mind, these platforms were given a score of 1 for F3 as it was felt that although some access was allowed it did not give total management and flexibility for the learning objects.

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Table 3: E-learning platform evaluation results

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The Adaptability category findings:

It was found that generally very little adaptability was offered by the learning platforms. For the first criteria A1 (which was that the system could adapt to the learnerÕs specific needs) it was found that only the A Tutor, Ilias and Saba platforms allowed for this (and in a very limited way) due to the fact that the learner could undertake a basic search for learning objects. These platforms were therefore given a score of 1 for this as they only had limited functionality.

It was found, however, that none of the platforms evaluated allowed for adaptability based on the learnerÕs behaviour or an individuals learning style. Therefore all of the platforms evaluated received a score of 0 for A2 and A3.

! +/! The Personalisation category findings:

It was found that for the first criteria evaluated P1 (which was the user interface personalisation), all platforms provided this and the personalisation offered ranged from interface layout, interface schemes and language choices. Specifically, A Tutor gained some but limited in this category as it does not offer interface personalisation but does offer a language choice and Sakai gained some but limited as it offered the interface personalisation but not the language choice. This outcome was expected as Rego et al. (2007) also found in his study that most of the platforms evaluated allowed for this level of personalisation.

For the next criteria P2 (providing the learning content to their specific learning need) A Tutor, Ilias and Saba platforms offered a limited amount for the learner due to the fact that they can search for appropriate learning objects. The last personalisation criteria P3 (learning object type specific to their specific learning needs) and P4 (course structure according to their specific requirements) were not found to be available at all in any of the e-learning platforms evaluated. Therefore all platforms received a score of 0 for P3 and P4.

Figure 5 shows the results of the evaluation and the overall scores for the platforms. It can be seen that not one platform gained over half of the available scores and this was due to the fact that they all provided very limited personalisation and adaptability for the learner. A Tutor and Saba gained the marks in the personalisation and adaptability categories due to the fact that they provide the user with the ability to search for learning objects based on their own requirements. These search functionalities have very limited search criteria available however.

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Figure 5: E-learning platforms and their overall score

This functionality offers limited personalisation, however, due to the fact that the learners cannot create their own specific course structure out of these learning objects. It was found also that none of the platforms evaluated offered any personalisation based on the learners learning style.

The outcome of this evaluation, therefore, is that it has demonstrated that none of the evaluated platforms can offer a truly personalised experience for the learner.

The learner and instructor are provided with the tools for course management and learning management. These tools are inflexible, however and do not cater for the specific needs of the learner. The platforms provide very limited personalisation and this is mostly for interface personalisation rather than actual content personalisation.