This paper addresses the issue of creating reusable adaptive courseware from the point of view of the author (teacher or instructor). We illustrate the idea of reusability under the motto “Authoring Once, Delivering Many ” by showing the conversion process from a generic authoring system, MOT (My Online Teacher), to a different delivery system, WHURLE. This exercise is but one in a series of interfacing exercises, through which we try, step by step, to come closer to the goal of being able to reuse adaptive educational material, once created, on any adaptive delivery platform desired. The focus here is less on the technical aspects of the interfacing, as on the reduction of authoring burden, on one side, and on the maintenance of a certain level of pedagogical flexibility during the conversion, on the other.

Since the very beginning of the research on Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (AHS), different systems have been developed for different domains and application areas. Besides some general features, which are expected to be present in any software system, AHSs have their own extra features that make them different from non-adaptive systems. Through a careful study of a large number of adaptive hypermedia systems, a hierarchy of primary features based on which one can evaluate different adaptive web systems are proposed. An evaluation weighting scheme is also proposed for the given features. A comparative analysis is carried out for 4 major adaptive hypermedia systems (AHA!, InterBook, STEA and SeAN). The results of our detailed evaluation put AHA! at the top followed by SETA, SeAN and InterBook, respectively. 1

In this paper we describe those aspects a designer has to take into account when designing Web-based adaptive courses with TANGOW. The discussion is specifically focused on the adaptivity issues, which are not covered by any standard design methodology. The first section describes the decisions that need to be made in order to create adaptive courses by using TANGOW. Work done on some approaches to facilitate the design of Web courses is presented next. The paper finishes with some conclusions and work in progress.

One of most important aspects in web-based learning environments is the need of providing feedback to students so that they know their situation with respect to the totality of the course. In static web-based courses, whose structure is similar to that of textbooks, this feedback information is not too difficult to provide. However, this is not the case for environments that take into account the student profile and her/his actions when following the course. One of these environments is TANGOW (Task-based Adaptive learNer Guidance On the Web), a system for adaptive Internet-based learning implemented by the authors. This paper discusses the importance of providing feedback in webbased learning environments. Afterwards, the feedback mechanisms provided in TANGOW along with their implementation are described. 1. THE IMPORTANCE OF PROVIDING FEEDBACK Internet makes it possible for a great number of users to access a vast amount of information. This is one of the main reasons why education has become one of its main areas of application. The information available is complex and heterogeneous, and existing navigation tools are not powerful enough to guide students in their information search process. Moreover, they are not able to identify specific learning itineraries for students, provided that their goals, previous knowledge and needs can be different. The expression "getting lost in hyperspace", attributed to Conklin [5], is directly related to the navigational hypertext problems: sometimes Carro, R.M., Pulido, E. and Rodrguez, P. (2000): Providing Feedback To Students In TANGOW. Proceedings of the Segundo Simposio Internacional de Informtica Educativa SIIE'2000 at Puertollano, Spain, November 2000. Published at "Informtica y Educacin para una sociedad interconectada"...

Conceptual models and advanced architectures for adaptive hypermedia systems in education