Adaptive Learning Glossary

Term	Definition
Adaptive Learning Tool	Decoding Adaptive (Pearson) Education technologies that can respond to a student’s interactions in real-time by automatically providing the student with individual support.
Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS)	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_tutoring_system ITS aims to provide immediate and customized instruction or feedback to learners, usually without requiring intervention from a human teacher. http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Intelligent_tutoring_system The major components of a typical ITS: knowledge about a domain (expert/domain model) knowledge about the learner (student model) knowledge about teaching strategies, pedagogy (tutoring model)
Scaffolding	https://www.edglossary.org/scaffolding/ Purpose: to reduce the negative emotions that students may experience when they get discouraged when attempting a difficult task without assistance. Example: breaking up a learning experience, concept, or skill into discrete parts, and giving students assistance to learn each part.
Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA)	http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/cta_chapter_2008.pdf CTA uses a variety of interview and observation strategies to capture a description of the knowledge that experts use to perform complex tasks.
Knowledge Components (KCs)	http://www.learnlab.org/research/wiki/images/e/e1/KoedingerMcLaughlinStamperEDM12.pdf Knowledge Components (KCs) are used to represent pieces of knowledge, concepts or skills that students need to solve problems. http://www.learnlab.org/research/wiki/index.php/Knowledge_component A knowledge component is a generalization of everyday terms like concept, principle, fact, or skill, and cognitive science terms like schema, production rule, misconception, or facet. "Explicit" knowledge component (a fact or principle) versus an "implicit" knowledge component (a skill).
EXperience Application Program Interface (XAPI)	http://blog.riptidesoftware.com/learning/xapi-101-what-is-xapi xAPI is a simple but powerful format that uses an activity and verb structure to describe activities. The structure in simplest form follows the pattern: Actor, Verb, Object or Jack, Did, This. If you add some context to the activity, like learning objectives or indicators of competency, you can string along all the things Jack did as an activity stream. The xAPI activities are stored in a database called a Learning Record Store (LRS).
Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL)	https://adlnet.gov/ The ADL Initiative is a US government program for R&D and policy on distributed learning. https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1271/the-xapi-and-the-lms-what-does-the-future-hold ADL is a standards body that began as a joint project of the US Department of Defense and the Department of Labor, and with industry participation. You may know ADL as the organization that brought us the SCORM standard.
Item Response Theory (IRT)
Classic Test Theory (CTT)