A Construction Method for Personalized e-Learning System Using Dynamic Estimations of Item Parameters and Examinees’ Abilities

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method to construct a personalized e-Learning system based on dynamic estimations of item parameters and learners’ abilities, where the learning content objects are of the same intrinsic quality or homogeneously distributed and the estimations are carried out using IRT(Item Response Theory). The system dynamically connects the test and the corresponding learning procedures. Test results are directly applied to estimate examinee’s ability and are used to modify the item parameters and the difficulties of learning content objects during the learning procedure is being operated. We define the learning unit ‘Node’ as an amount of learning objects operated so that new parameters can be re-estimated. There are various content objects in a Node and the parameters estimated at the end of current Node are directly applied to the next Node. We offer the most appropriate learning Node for a person’s ability throughout the estimation processes of IRT. As a result, this scheme improves learning efficiency in web-base e-Learning environments offering the most appropriate learning objects and items to the individual students according to their estimated abilities. This scheme can be applied to any e-Learning subject having homogeneous learning objects and unidimensional test items. In order to construct the system, we present an operation scenario using the proposed system architecture with the essential databases and agents.