Creating a Corpus of Targeted Learning Resources with a Web-Based Open Authoring Tool

Personalizing learning to students’ traits and interests requires diverse learning content. Previous studies have demonstrated the value of such materials in learning but a challenge remains in creating a corpus of content large enough to meet students’ varied interests and abilities. We present and evaluate a prototype web-based tool for open authoring of learning materials. We conducted a study (an open web experiment) to evaluate whether specific student profiles presented in the tool’s interface increase the diversity of the contributions, and whether authors tailor their contributions to the features in the profiles. We report on the quality of materials produced, authors’ facility in rating them, effects of author traits, and impact of the tailoring feature. Participants were professional teachers (math and non-math) and amateurs. Participants were randomly assigned to the tailoring tool or a simplified version without the tailoring feature. We find that while there are differences by teaching status, all three groups make contributions of worth. The tailoring feature leads contributors to tailor materials with greater potential to engage students. The experiment suggests that an open access web-based tool is a feasible technology for developing a large corpus of materials for personalized learning.