Combining Data- and Knowledge-Driven AI with Didactics for Individualized Learning Recommendations

Students in higher education tend to become increasingly heterogeneous groups of learners. This is due to different levels of prior knowledge or competences, diverse learning styles, differing affinity to (digital) media, and other factors. Learner-centred education needs to cope with that heterogeneity in order to make specific learning offers to the individual learner. This is difficult in physical classes where the coaching effort cannot be increased without limitation. This paper presents an individualized digital learning environment, iLE, that is intended to be used as an additional learning aid that supplements physical classes. iLE provides recommendations of learning material such as learning videos targeted to the specific needs of individual learners. The paper presents the technical approach behind iLE, in particular a combination of data- and knowledge-driven artificial intelligence techniques, as well as the didactical underpinning of iLE.