Stewart, Craig
(2012)
A cultural education model: design and implementation of adaptive multimedia interfaces in eLearning.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
This thesis presents research performed over the span of 9 years in the area of adaptive multimedia interfaces (specifically Adaptive Hypermedia in eLearning), with special focus on a cultural education model.
In particular, the thesis looks at how the adaptive interfaces can cater for cultural diversity in education, instead of presenting a homogenous delivery for the whole student population, regardless of their cultural background. Specifically, this research provides a framework for cultural adaptation, CAE (Cultural Artefacts in Education), based on Marcus & Gould’s web model, as well as its source, Hofstede’s indexes. This framework is supported by a questionnaire, the CAE questionnaire, a key product of this research, which has been shown to map on Hofstede’s indexes, and which has been used to model features for personalised adaptive interfaces for different cultures. The questionnaire is in English language, but this work also presents a study showing to what extent the results obtained are similar to native language questionnaire results.
The CAE Framework is further extended by providing two ontologies, a full-scale ontology, called the CAE-F ontology, and a light-weight ontology, called the CAE-L ontology. These ontologies detail the HCI (Human Computer Interaction) features that need to be integrated into an adaptive system in order to cater for cultural adaptation. These features can be used for all types of adaptation, as defined in adaptive hypermedia. The latter ontology is then illustrated in a study of eleven countries, for the specific cultural adaptation case of interface adaptation, of which current research is extremely sparse.
These illustrations are further used in a formative evaluation, which establishes to what extent the cultural adaptation ontologies can be applied. This is followed by a summative, real-life evaluation of cultural adaptation for Romanian students, and the results are reported and discussed. This study validates the proof of concept for using CAE in a real world setting.
Finally, the overall achievements of this work are summarised, conclusions are drawn, and recommendation for further research are done.
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