Adapting instruction

Abstract

It is often claimed that adapting instruction to an individual's progress, personal characteristics or preferences will somehow increase learning, and there have been literally thousands of studies over at least the past 100 years exploring this idea. This presentation will review various approaches to adapting instruction, such as changing the rate, difficulty, sequence or structure, instructional strategy or instructional media on the basis of learner progress, prior knowledge, aptitudes or preferences, under various forms of instructor, learner, program, or opponent control. This paper gives an organizing framework, describes some of the theoretical underpinnings for particular adaptations, and describes experimental and practical criteria for evaluating claims of efficacy and efficiency of instructional adaptations. © 2009 Springer.