Adaptive learning technologies for bioengineering education

Learning technologies employed both inside and outside the classroom are increasingly influencing the nature of teaching and learning. Web-based learning technologies are enabling powerful possibilities for learning activities outside the classroom, both in preparation for in-class activities and in following them up. Of particular importance among these possibilities is the opportunity to address learners as individuals, assessing their strengths and weaknesses and adapting learning activities in response. Over the past few years we have been developing and maturing learning technologies that target these aims in the context of the National Science Foundation's VaNTH (Vanderbilt University; Northwestern University; University of Texas at Austin; and Health, Science and Technology at Harvard/MIT) Engineering Research Center (ERC). In this article we describe these technologies and discuss their roles in bioengineering education. In pursuing adaptive learning technologies for VaNTH, our primary motivation has been to make the means for authoring such activities accessible to bioengineering educators while providing enough expressive power to enable ambitious applications and the ability to incrementally acquire the needed skills. To address this aim we have created an authoring technology called the courseware authoring and packaging environment (CAPE).