Personalizing Online Educational Tools

As more people turn to online resources to learn, there will be an increasing need for systems to understand and adapt to the needs of their users. Engagement is an important aspect to keep users committed to learning. Learning approaches for online systems can benefit from personalization to engage their users. However, many approaches for personalization currently rely on methods (e.g., historical behavioral data, questionnaires, quizzes) that are unable to provide a personalized experience from the start-of-use of a system. As users in a learning environment are exposed to new content, the first impression that they receive from the system influences their commitment with the program. In this position paper we propose a quantitative approach for personalization in online learning environments to overcome current problems for personalization in such environments.