An evolutionary approach for competency-based curriculum sequencing

Abstract

The process of creating e-learning contents using reusable learning objects (LOs) can be broken down in two sub-processes: LOs finding and LO sequencing. Sequencing is usually performed by instructors, who create courses targeting generic profiles rather than personalized materials. This paper proposes an evolutionary approach to automate this latter problem while, simultaneously, encourages reusability and interoperability by promoting standards employment. A model that enables automated curriculum sequencing is proposed. By means of interoperable competency records and LO metadata, the sequencing problem is turned into a constraint satisfaction problem. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) agents are designed, built and tested in real and simulated scenarios. Results show both approaches succeed in all test cases, and that they handle reasonably computational complexity inherent to this problem, but PSO approach outperforms GA.