Adaptive and personalized educational ubiquitous multi-agent system using context-awareness services and mobile devices

Abstract

In the last decade, some useful contributions have occurred to elearning system development such as adaptation, ubiquity, personalization, as well as context-awareness services. The aim of this paper is to present the advantages brought by the integration of ubiquitous computing along with distributed artificial intelligence techniques in order to build an adaptive and personalized context-aware learning system by using mobile devices. Based on this model we propose a multi-agent context-aware u-learning system that offers several functionalities such as context-aware learning planning, personalized course evaluation, selection of learning objects according to student profile, search of learning objects in repository federations, search of thematic learning assistants, and access of current context-aware collaborative learning activities involved. In addition, several context-awareness services are incorporated within the adaptive e-learning system that can be used from mobile devices. In order to validate the model a prototype was built and tested through a case study. Results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of using this kind of approaches in virtual learning environments which constitutes an attempt to improve learning processes.