What is meant by adaptive and predictive planning?

Learning is an important aspect of any development process be it of any field. Learning can be classified in to many types, but in this article only two types have been discussed namely:
- Adaptive learning and
- Predictive learning

Adaptive Planning or Learning

- Adaptive learning is considered to be a computer driven educational method in which the computers are the interactive teaching devices rather than having human teachers do the teaching.

- The presentation of the educational material is adapted by the computers according to the weaknesses of the students which are determined by the responses of the students to the questions asked by the computer.

- Here the whole learning process is motivated by the idea of using electronic education for incorporating the interactive values to a student that would have been provided by an actual human tutor or teacher.

- This technology encompasses various aspects taken from the fields like education, psychology, computer science and so on.

- Adaptive learning was evolved because it is not possible to achieve tailored learning with non adaptive and traditional approaches.

- The learner is transformed from the passive receptor of the information to the collaborator of the educational processes.

- The primary application of the adaptive learning is in basically the following two fields which have been designed as both web applications and the desk top applications:
1. Education and
2. Business training.

Adaptive learning is also known by several other names like:
1. Computer based learning
2. Adaptive educational hyper- media
3. Intelligent tutoring systems
4. Adaptive instructions
5. Computer based pedagogical agents

Models or Components of Adaptive learning

The whole process of adaptive learning has been divided in to some separate models or components as mentioned below:

1. Student Model
- This model keeps a track of the student and learns about him.
- This model makes use of algorithms that have been researched for over 20 years.
- The CAT (computer adaptive testing) makes use of the simplest means for the determination of the students’ skill.
- Nowadays, the students’ models make use of richer algorithms for providing a more extensive diagnosis of the weaknesses of the students.
- This it does by linking the questions and the concepts and using ability levels to define the strengths and weaknesses.

2. Instructional model
- This model is actually responsible for conveying the information.
- It makes use of the best technological methods for educational purposes like multimedia presentations along with the expert teacher advice.
- When the students make mistakes, the model provides them with useful hints.
- These hints can be question specific.

3. Instructional environment
This provides an interface for the system and human interaction.

4. Expert model
- This model is responsible for teaching the students using the stored information which is to be taught.
- This may include solutions for question sets, lessons and tutorials.
- Some very sophisticate expert models may use expert methodologies for the illustration of the solution of the questions.
- In some of the adaptive learning systems, the qualities of an expert model may be acquired by an instructional model.

Predictive Planning or Learning

- The predictive learning involves machine learning i.e., to say an agent has to build a model of its own environment type by carrying out various actions in several circumstances.

- The knowledge of the effects of the actions tried out is used for turning the models in to planning operators.

- This is done so that the agent is able to act purposefully in that environment.

- We can say that the predictive learning is all about learning with a minimum of the mental structure that exists already.

- Some say that this kind of learning has been inspired by the Piaget’s account of the construction of knowledge of the world by interacting with it.