Adaptive navigation support in educational hypermedia: the role of student knowledge level and the case for meta‐adaptation

Abstract Adaptive hypermedia is an alternative to the traditional “one‐size‐fits‐all” approach in the development of hypermedia systems. Adaptive hypermedia (AH) systems build a model of the goals, preferences, and knowledge of each individual user, and use this model throughout the interaction with the user, in order to adapt to the needs of that user. Adaptive navigation support is a specific group of adaptive hypermedia techniques that become especially popular in educational hypermedia systems. This paper provides a brief overview of main adaptive navigation support techniques and analyzes the results of most representative empirical studies of these techniques. It demonstrates an evidence that different known techniques work most efficiently in different context. In particular, the studies summarized in the paper have provided evidence that users with different knowledge level of the subject may appreciate different adaptive navigation support technologies. The paper argues that more empirical studies are required to help the developers of adaptive hypermedia systems in selecting most relevant adaptation technologies. It also attempts to build a case for meta‐adaptive hypermedia systems, ie, systems that are able to adapt the very adaptation technology to the given user and context.