Re-assessing the value of adaptive navigation support in E-learning context

In a recent study, we discovered a new effect of adaptive navigation support in the context of E-learning: the ability to motivate students to work more with non-mandatory educational content. The results presented in this paper extend the limits of our earlier findings. We describe the implementation of adaptive navigation support for the SQL domain, and report the results of the classroom evaluation of our approach. Among other issues, we investigate whether the use in parallel of two different types of navigation support could change the nature or the magnitude of the previously observed effect. Our study confirms the motivational value of navigation support in the new domain. We observe the increase of this effect after adding the concept-based navigation layer to the existing topic-based adaptive navigation service. The results of the navigational pattern analysis allow us to determine the major source of this increase.