Designing Adaptive Instructional Environments: Insights from Empirical Evidence
Paula J. Durlach, Jessica M. Ray · 2011
Abstract : In adaptive instructional environments, instructional interventions and/or content can be adapted to an individual learner's competence level or other characteristics. The intention behind adaptation is to maintain the optimal level of challenge for each individual student, to provide support, and to correct misconceptions. This report reviews technology-based adaptive instructional procedures. To be included, an experiment had to describe a direct comparison of learning outcomes resulting from an adaptive system vs. a nonadaptive system, or one adaptive method vs. another. Many of the experiments used multiple adaptive interventions together, making it difficult to determine the relative contribution of the different types of adaptive interventions to the superior learning outcomes. Consequently, we were unable to conclude which adaptive techniques might be more effective than others. Nevertheless, based on our analysis, we suggest the following adaptive techniques as the most likely to provide learning payoffs: (1) Error-sensitive feedback, (2 ) Mastery Learning, (3) Adaptive spacing and repetition for drill-and-practice items, (4) Fading of worked examples for problem solving situations, or fading of demonstrations for behavioral tasks (such as in scenario-based simulations), and (5) Metacognitive prompting, both domain relevant and domain independent.