An Adaptive E-Learning System based on Student's Learning Styles: An Empirical Study

Personalized e-learning implementation is recognized as one of the most interesting research areas in the distance web-based education. Since the learning style of each learner is different one must fit e-learning with the different needs of learners. This paper presents an approach to integrate learning styles into adaptive e-learning hypermedia. The main objective was to develop a new Adaptive Educational Hypermedia System based on Honey and Mumford learning style model (AEHS-H&M) and assess the effect of adapting educational materials individualized to the student's learning style. To achieve the main objectives, a case study was developed. An experiment between two groups of students was conducted to evaluate the impact on learning achievement. Inferential statistics were applied to make inferences from the sample data to more general conditions was designed to evaluate the new approach of matching learning materials with learning styles and their influence on student's learning achievement. The findings support the use of learning styles as guideline for adaptation into the adaptive e-learning hypermedia systems.