Susan Bull and Open Learner Models: Special Issues of IJAIE

"Turn the pages you didn't open ..." - Gene Clark

I shared an office with Susan Bull at the University of Brighton in the late 1990s. Susan, who has now moved to the University of Birmingham, is one of the most imaginative and hard working people I ever met and she has produced umpteen trillion papers on Learner Modeling and in particular Open Learner Models. I wish I had thought of open learner models myself but at least I was lucky enough to co-author a couple of papers with Susan (Bull & Shurville, 1999a, 1999b).

So what are open learner models? Over to Susan and her co-authors ...

• "The learner model is central to an adaptive educational system, as it is the model of the learner’s understanding (and possibly also other attributes such as their goals, motivation, learning preferences, etc.), that enables a system to adapt to the individual user’s current learning requirements. Traditionally, the learner model has been closed to the learner since its primary purpose, as indicated above, has been to allow a system to adapt to the individual’s needs. For several decades now, the Artificial Intelligence in Education community has been developing methods for modelling learners, and dealing with the dynamics and potential inaccuracy of learner models. One promising approach to improving the accuracy of the learner model is to open the contents of the model to the learner it represents, to allow them to suggest additional information, or to propose corrections to entries, thereby helping to maintain the accuracy of a system’s model of the user’s knowledge and other attributes relevant to the specific educational context. A second benefit of this interactive approach to learner modelling is that the learner model now plays a new role – not only can the learner contribute information to help increase the accuracy and therefore the utility of their learner model for adaptation purposes, but the model can also become a learning resource for the student in its own right. Such an open learner model (i.e. a learner model accessible to the learner modelled) offers the learner a perspective on their understanding that is not usually available to them, which can facilitate reflection on their knowledge and on the learning process more generally, as students must carefully consider their knowledge state before suggesting changes to their model. Furthermore, even non-interactive open learner models (that is, learner models that are inspectable but not changeable by the user) have the potential to prompt learner reflection and metacognition in a similar manner, as they confront the learner with information about their understanding which is likely to provoke some kind of cognitive reaction from them." (Bull, Dimitrova, and McCalla, 2007).
  

That more or less says it all. My only comment is that open learner models herald a way for artificial intellgence in education to embrace constructivist and student-centred approaches. To my mind reflection and metacognition have to outshine passive grazing of knowledge. It would be trendy to mention that open learner models have potential in personal learning environments and connections to learner-generated contexts. As Lyn Pemberton used to tease, I'm so a la mode that I'm going to do it anyway.

Susan has just co-edited a pair of special issues of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education that introduce the state of play and current research issues in open student models. I recommend that anyone with an interest in AI and education should read the first and second parts of the introduction (Bull, Dimitrova & McCalla, G, 2007; Dimitrova, McCalla & Bull, 2007). Susan's has a paper in the issue with Judy Kay of the University of Sydney 'Student Models that Invite the Learner In: The SMILI
:-) Learner Modelling Framework' , which takes us toward a common framework to compare and contrast open learner models. Phil Agre argues that research in AI goes through neat and scruffy phases and both are necessary to make progress. It is good to see the emergence of a neat framework to tie the field of open learner models together. Now people can get on with some wild and scruffy research!

With further progress in mind, I notice from her home page that Susan has some PhD opportunities available and is particularly interested in supervising PhD students interested in open learner modelling, adaptive learning environments, mobile learning or computer-assisted language learning. If you are setting out in educational technology then having Susan as a supervisor would be a grand way to start. I certainly learned a lot sharing that office.

References

• Bull, S., Dimitrova, V. & McCalla, G. (2007). Open Learner Models: Research Questions (Preface to Special Issue of the IJAIED Part 1), International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(2), 83-87.
• Dimitrova, V., McCalla, G. & Bull, S. (2007). Open Learner Models: Future Research Directions (Preface to Special Issue of the IJAIED Part 2), International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(3), 217-226.
• Bull, S. & Kay, J. (2007). Student Models that Invite the Learner In: The SMILI Open Learner Modelling Framework, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 17(2), 89-120.
• Bull, S. & Shurville, S. (1999a). Cooperative Writer Modeling: Facilitating Reader-Based Writing with Scrawl. In Morales, R., Pain, H., Bull, S. and Kay, J. (eds), Proceedings of Workshop on Open, Interactive and Other Overt Approaches to Learner Modeling, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education 1999, pp 1-8.
• Bull S. & Shurville S. (1999b). Online Reader, Writer and Student Models to Support the Writing Process. In Kay J. (ed.) The Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on User Modeling 1999, Banff, Canada, pp 295–297.