Application of the adaptive content concept for an e-learning resource

Nowadays, the e-learning market is rapidly growing both financially and geographically. More and more often, e-learning resources involve a multicultural audience and are becoming available to people with different educational backgrounds. However, there are cognitive specificity and different approaches to the learning process in different cultures. This paper is devoted to illustrating a possible solution for adaptation of content of an e-learning resource to a multicultural audience. The solution described applies the adaptive content concept based on individual educational trajectories and preparing content according to the individual cultural characteristics of learner and his or her competencies, both obtained and desired. During the research, the learner-centric model of learning processes was developed. In the article, both high-level and detailed models are presented. Principles of planning the individual learning trajectory based on the learner’s obtained and desired competencies, and statistical data about his or her learning style are also described. As an example of the possibility to apply historical data on how learning style affects successful passing through the learning course, the statistical analysis is provided. The analysis relies on person-course deidentified dataset from seven courses on HarvardX and MITx platforms provided during the 2013/14 academic year. This analysis demonstrated the statistical significance of several parameters. A comparison of algorithms for estimating the probability of successfully passing the course depending on the learning style, is also presented.