Field Of Adaptive Hypermedia Research Articles

A comparative survey of Personalised Information Retrieval and Adaptive Hypermedia techniques

A key driver for next generation web information retrieval systems is becoming the degree to which a user’s search and presentation experience is adapted to individual user properties and contexts of use. Over the past decades, two parallel threads of personalisation research have emerged, one originating in the document space in the area of Personalised Information Retrieval (PIR) and the other arising from the hypertext space in the field of Adaptive Hypermedia (AH).PIR typically aims to bias search results towards more personally relevant information by modifying traditional document ranking algorithms. Such techniques tend to represent users with simplified personas (often based on historic interests), enabling the efficient calculation of personalised ranked lists. On the other hand, the field of Adaptive Hypermedia (AH) has addressed the challenge of biasing content retrieval and presentation by adapting towards multiple characteristics. These characteristics, more typically called personalisation “dimensions”, include user goals or prior knowledge, enabling adaptive and personalised result compositions and navigations.The question arises as to whether it is possible to provide a comparison of PIR and AH, where the respective strengths and limitations can be exposed, but also where potential complementary affordances can be identified. This survey investigates the key techniques and impacts in the use of PIR and AH technology in order to identify such affordances and limitations. In particular, the techniques are analysed by examining key activities in the retrieval process, namely (i) query adaptation, (ii) adaptive retrieval and (iii) adaptive result composition and presentation. In each of these areas, the survey identifies individual strengths and limitations. Following this comparison of techniques, the paper also illustrates an example of a potential synergy in a hybridised approach, where adaptation can be tailored in different aspects of PIR and AH systems. Moreover, the concerns resulting from interdependencies and the respective tradeoffs of techniques are discussed, along with potential future directions and remaining challenges.

Interview with Peter Brusilovsky

Peter Brusilovsky has been working in the field of adaptive hypermedia and adaptive Web-based systems for more than 20 years. He served as a co-editor of several books and a guest editor of several special journal issues on adaptive hypermedia and the adaptive Web. He co-founded the Adaptive Hypermedia conference series and chaired several conferences and multiple workshops on adaptive hypermedia, adaptive Web-based systems, and User Modeling. He is Associate Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies and a board member for several journals. He is also the current President of User Modeling Inc., a professional organization of user modeling researchers. Dr. Brusilovsky is currently an Associate Professor of Information Science and Intelligent Systems at the University of Pittsburgh, where he leads Personalized and Adaptive Web Systems Lab.

User modeling and adaptive Semantic Web

Historically, personalization and adaptation have been important factors for the success of the Web and therefore they have been important topics in Web research. Many research efforts in the field of adaptive hypermedia and adaptive Web-based systems have resulted in solutions for user-adapted access to Web content, often in terms of systems that provide an adaptive hypermedia structure of content pages and hyperlinks. With pages and links that depend on the user, it is feasible to offer a high degree of personalization. Next to research into engineering and realizing adaptation, research into user modeling has been crucial for the success of adaptation. To apply the right adaptation it is necessary to know the user and her relevant properties and the research field of user modeling has focused on theories and techniques for eliciting knowledge about the user. Naturally, the research fields of adaptive Web-based systems and user modeling have always lived in close harmony. In order to create a similar success with personalization and adaptation in relation to the Semantic Web, adaptation and user modeling have to be redefined, with consequences for the research into these topics. In particular, the nature of user modeling changes significantly with the extended distribution and openness that we encounter on the Web of Data, with implications from problems studied in Web science. Promising research shows how Semantic Web-based solutions can aid in the representation of user properties for sharing and linking of user models. In this vision paper we outline the evolution of user modeling and adaptation in connection to the Semantic Web and list research questions and challenges for the relevant research fields.

From adaptive hypermedia to the adaptive web

Web systems suffer from an inability to satisfy heterogeneous needs of many users. A remedy for the negative effects of the traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach is to develop systems with an ability to adapt their behavior to the goals, tasks, interests, and other features of individual users and groups of users. Adaptive Web is a relatively young research area. Started in with a few pioneering works on adaptive hypertext in early 1990, it now attracts many researchers from different communities such as hypertext, user modeling, machine learning, natural language generation, information retrieval, intelligent tutoring systems, cognitive science, and Web-based education. Currently, the established application areas of adaptive Web systems are education, information retrieval, and kiosk-style information systems. A number of more recent projects are also exploring new application areas such as e-commerce, medicine, and tourism. While research-level systems constitute the majority of adaptive Web systems, a few successful industrial systems show the commercial potential of the field. This talk will review a number of adaptation techniques that have been developed and evaluated in the field of adaptive hypermedia and applied in adaptive Web systems. It will also present several examples of adaptive Web systems in different application areas. To answer the conference motto “interaction in motion” the talk will specially address the issue of developing adaptive systems for ubiquitous computing and mobile Web. It will discuss the needs and challenges of “adaptation in motion” and present some known success stories.