The effects of adaptive educational web environments to learners academic achievement and navigation

The aim of the research is to investigate the effects of an adaptive educational hypermedia on learners? academic achievements and navigation. The study has the pretest-posttest, equivalent-groups true experimental design. The independent variable of the research is web based learning environment and the dependent variables are academic achievement, perceived disorientation, the rate of content map use as navigation tool and revisitation rates.The sampling of research is comprised of 67 Turkish Language Teaching students enrolled in Introduction to Computing course studying at Gazi Faculty of Education, Gazi University in 2007?2008 Fall semester. The students are randomly assigned to the adaptive or non-adaptive web based learning environments. Student modeling and inference mechanisms of the adaptive system are developed based on Bayesian network model that is one of the artificial intelligence techniques. This adaptive learning system dynamically modifies links with visual hints to guide users current state of subjects in content map, shows or hides additional information on the topic and determines type of content presentation based on a user model.According to the findings, there is not a significant difference between the academic achievement scores of both groups (adaptive or non-adaptive). Perceived disorientation scores and revisitation rates of students in the adaptive environment significantly lower and the rate of content map use as navigation tool is significantly higher than the non-adaptive environment group. The students in both groups declare high amount of satisfaction related to the learning environments. Moreover, the students in the adaptive environment state positive views on adaptations and their usefulness.