Laying a foundation for the graphical course map

Abstract

The learning managements systems (LMS)s that are widely used to provide access to educational opportunities on the Web are limited by a text based, linear presentation of course materials and the standard temporal restrictions in the traditional classroom. Making a fundamental change in how course materials are presented and interfaced with can make educational opportunities available to a broader spectrum of people with diverse abilities and various circumstances. We have developed a graph-based approach to presenting the learning materials of a course using a system called ENABLE [6, 7] with three major goals: (1) facilitate restructuring a set of synchronous classroom materials into a dynamic online system, (2) provide algorithms to analyze and enhance student performance as well as provide insights to the instructor concerning the efficacy of the learning items and their organization, and (3) identify ways to use data from an existing linear, temporal based course presentation to train predictive models for a course that allows individual flexibility in the ordering of the material. This work demonstrates the possibility of presenting course materials in a graphical way that expresses important relations and provides support for manipulating the order and timing of those materials. The graphical course map adds a new approach to making education accessible to people from many different spectrums of ability that respond and interface better with visual representations and those who will benefit from the removal of temporal limitations.