Custom E-learning Experiences: Working with Profiles for Multiple Content Sources Access and Adaptation

It is a common belief that the problem of extracting learners profiles to be used for delivering custom learning experiences is a closed case. Yet, practical solutions do not completely cope with the complex issue of capturing all the features of users, especially when very heterogeneous learners are considered, which may have special needs or characteristics (such as disabilities), or are exploiting non-standard equipments to access services (e.g., mobile devices). For example, the standard ACCLIP specification provides means for describing preferences in terms of user accessibility; yet, it lacks methods to manage technical characteristics of the exploited device. Conversely, CC/PP profiles are thought to describe device capabilities, but they are unable to report on users’ characteristics. With this unsolved problem in view, we present an effective approach to profiling e-learners, which allows the xtraction and adaptation of multi source didactical content for customized educational experiences. The idea behind this is to unite the strengths of ACCLIP and CC/PP protocols, while avoiding specification conflicts. Several use cases are described which show the viability of our proposal.